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Gold Star Family Plate — No Registration Fee, and Free Metered Parking With It

The Gold Star Family plate goes to an immediate family member — spouse, parent, children or siblings. Up to three plates may be issued per award type. They are exempt from the regular motor vehicle registration fee, they run on a two-year cycle, and the vehicle displaying one may park in metered or timed spaces without paying and without being fined.

Verified August 23, 2026

What this benefit is

The Gold Star Family plate goes to an immediate family member — spouse, parent, children or siblings. Up to three plates may be issued per award type. They are exempt from the regular motor vehicle registration fee, they run on a two-year cycle, and the vehicle displaying one may park in metered or timed spaces without paying and without being fined.

What it's worth: Up to three plates, exempt from the regular registration fee, plus free metered and timed parking

  • The section lists the plate in two forms — Gold Star Family and Gold Star Family Personalized — both open to spouse, parent, children or siblings.
  • No more than three plates per award type may be issued to the recipient or qualifying family members.
  • The plates are issued or revalidated for a biennial period expiring twenty-four months from the month of issue.
  • The metered and timed parking privilege in subsection (D) does not apply where or when stopping, parking or standing is prohibited for all vehicles, or in spaces reserved for special types of vehicles.
  • Subsection (E) exempts these plates from §56-3-8100 — the general special-plate provisions that set minimum order counts and deposits for a new plate series.

Who is entitled to it

  • You are an immediate family member.
  • Your home is in this state.

Not sure whether that describes you?

Answer a few questions about this benefit specifically — we only ask what this one actually depends on, and we stop as soon as we know.

How to claim it

  1. 1Apply with official military documentation — the section names a DD-214, an NGB Form 22, or official orders.
  2. 2Ask for the fee position in writing if you are billed. Subsection (B) exempts these plates from the regular motor vehicle registration fee in Article 5 of this chapter.
  3. 3Use the parking privilege. Subsection (D) lets a vehicle displaying the plate park in metered or timed spaces without paying the fee or taking the fine — statewide, not city by city.
  4. 4Count the plates, not the vehicles. Three per award type is the ceiling across the recipient and the qualifying family members together.
  5. 5Diary the two-year revalidation. It runs twenty-four months from the month of issue, not to a common date.
Form
Special licence plate application with official military documentation
File with
Department of Motor Vehicles
Documents you will need
dd214
Periodic
Re-confirmed from time to time.
CorrectionIf a guide sends you to §56-3-9910 for this plate, it is out of date by four years. That section was repealed with effect from 6 May 2022 and the plate now lives at §56-3-14930, where it carries a registration fee exemption and a metered-parking privilege the old section did not give it.
Worth knowingThe free-parking privilege is the half nobody mentions. It is written into the plate section itself, so it needs no placard, no separate application and no city ordinance — and it covers timed bays as well as meters.
Known gapThe section does not define which deaths qualify a family as Gold Star, leaving that to the documentation the department accepts, and it sets no remarriage condition on a surviving spouse. Confirm both with the department before relying on either point.

Sources

This finder provides an informational match, not a government eligibility determination. The responsible agency decides your application.