Exchanging our US driver licenses for Portuguese ones

True, we don't have a car but ... (65)

One of the best things about our lives in Portugal is that we don’t have a car. We’re thrilled to have said goodbye to paying property taxes, filling the gas tank, endlessly searching for parking, and sitting in traffic (well, ok we do ride the bus every so often, but that’s different … somehow).

It’s still a good idea to have a driver license, though, as there may come a time when we need to go somewhere not well-served by public transportation. So we’ve taken the necessary steps to be prepared should that scary day ever arrive.

At first glance, the process of turning our US licenses into Portuguese ones seemed daunting. People in all of our usual online haunts were writing about it and it felt overwhelming. Yes, like many other hurdles along the way to successful integration into Portuguese society, there are many steps to follow. The fact that so much of it involves a language we don’t speak well added to the fear factor. We found, though, that if you’re careful and pay attention to detail it’s quite straightforward and manageable. It’s turned out to be less challenging than some of the other hurdles we’ve already cleared.

First, make sure you really need to make the exchange. Recent changes in Portuguese law mean that anyone with a valid US driver license can legally drive in Portugal under certain conditions (licenses from other countries apply here as well … do your research). If your license doesn’t expire for several years, there’s no reason to rush to swap it out. If you’re like us, though, and your license expires on your birthday in 2023 and your (former) home state doesn’t allow for online renewals, it’s a good idea to make the switch before the clock runs out on your US card. (If your license does expire before you get to this, it’s actually not that big a deal. It just adds a couple of steps. All you need to do is take a driver ed class and pass the written exam. A minor headache, time perhaps better spent elsewhere. Oh wait … did we mention the class and test will be in Portuguese?)

As we have for many of the “paperwork” steps along the way, we found the resources and support provided by the Facebook group Americans and FriendsPT to be invaluable. There’s a file available to members of that group which clearly outlines everything necessary to exchange driver licenses. We downloaded that sucker, highlighted the bejeebers out of it and took copious notes.

Here’s how it worked for us:

Prior to leaving your home country

That lull between the time you send off your Visa application and when you actually move is the time to get cracking on tasks like this one. (Lull?, we hear you ask, what is this lull of which you speak? Yeah, you’re right, there’s no lull. Nevermind. But you should add this to your laundry list if it’s not already there. Doing so will save you time, money, and hassle.)

Before we moved here last June, Scott (who was on all things paperwork while Amy took charge of selling and packing the house - division of labor!) did the following:

1. Obtained a copies of our Missouri (MO) driver records. For this he needed to:

   1. locate, download, and complete MO Form 4681

   2. notarize MO Form 4681

   3. send the completed and notarized MO Form 4681 with fee to the proper place

   4. wait for the driver record to be returned by mail.¹

2. Once we had the MO driver record, he sent it off to be apostilled by the MO Secretary of State. For this he needed to:

   1. notarize the driver record obtained in step 1

   2. mail the document along with a letter and fee. The letter needed to include:

      1. the name of the country the documents would be used in

      2. a return address (give yourself plenty of time to have this processed and returned to your US address),

      3. a contact phone number

      4. e-mail address

   3. wait for the apostilled driver record to be returned by mail.²

3. Requested from the Washington DC Consulate, a Certificate of Authentication of Driving License (Certificado de Autenticação da Carta de Condução). For this he sent:

   1. a notarized copy of the front and back of our driver licenses

   2. the fee (money order or official bank check only) - note: he emailed the consulate to learn what the proper fee was

   3. postage-paid return envelope or courier return waybill.³

4. Just to be safe, we also notarized a second copy of the front and back of our drivers licenses. The ones we used for step 3 were returned to us with the Certificate but we figured a second copy wouldn’t hurt.⁴

Note: the above steps were for our particular, specific process of moving from the state of Missouri to Portugal. These will vary by country, state (in the US), consulate (again, in the US), and perhaps even your age. Do your research to be sure you’re doing what is appropriate for your situation.

You’ll note that many of the points outlined above required the intervention of a notary and/or an apostille. One of our neighbors happened to be a notary so we we lucked out there⁵. In the US, notaries can often be found in places like UPS and FedEx stores, though, if you aren’t as fortunate.

For those who may be wondering what an apostille is (like us a year ago when we were young and naïve), it’s basically a notary on steroids. It’s someone who holds an official government post (state or federal) who signs off on a document. In our case, the person who applied the apostille in Missouri was testifying that our notary was, in fact, a notary. Presumably, they looked her up in their Notary Rolodex, said, “Yup, she’s a notary” and put a big, fancy stamp on a thick, fancy piece of paper. Our notary could have either been lying or been bamboozled by a fake driver record (none of the three of us had ever seen a driver record before and it looked like something that could have been cooked up on a home computer - though dot matrix printers are a little hard to come by these days), but it’s not the job of the person apostilling the document to verify the legitimacy of the document itself. At least in this case.

We made sure to carefully pack all of these signed, stamped and sealed documents carefully into one of our six duffels and brought them all to Portugal.

Where they lived quietly and unobtrusively in a drawer for seven months.

After arriving in Portugal

The driver license exchange cannot be completed until your temporary residency card arrives. (Getting that card is its own series of hurdles, all of which, again, are manageable with care and a rainbow array of highlighters.)

One step that can be taken prior to the arrival of the card, though, is the medical exam. We used an online doctor for this - it cost 35€, took all of 10 minutes, and we logged on at 12:30 and made an appointment for that afternoon. The doctor sent his report electronically to IMT (Instituto da Mobilidade e dos Transportes, the department in charge of these things).

Once Amy’s residency card arrived, we sprang back into action on the licenses, rousting all of the above documents from their drawer and scanning them into our computer. We did the same for the front and back of Amy’s residency card and went to IMT’s website, which can be accessed in English. This page is a good place to start. We clicked a couple of links until we determined which category the US falls into and read the clearly outlined steps.

On Sunday January 29, we filled out this form, which is in both Portuguese and English, attached all of the scanned documents in their appropriate places, clicked submit and were done.

Moments later Amy got a confirmation email indicating receipt. On Friday, February 3, she received an email telling her an appointment had been assigned and listing the items she was to bring. Interestingly, that email contained no information about the appointment. The message with the deets arrived on Monday, February 6. She was to report on Tuesday, February 14 at 10 AM to a citizen store in Bela Vista, an easy Metro ride from our apartment. Terrific!

Valentine’s Day rolled around (Yay! A romantic date at the Portuguese DMV!) and we left super early to quell our nerves.

A nervous Amy at the beautiful Bela Vista Metro station.

Despite a few missed turns as we (failed to) follow our phone’s directions, we arrived at our destination around 9:25. By 9:30 we’d gotten our admission ticket (we’re getting quite good at the ticket machines, if we do say so ourselves) and before we’d even had a chance to sit down, our number was being flashed on the monitor.

We did the fala inglês? dance and the clerk (um pouco) loosened up a little as we used our broken Portuguese as best we could. We handed over the original versions of the documents we’d gotten from the US and sent via email. We paid 30€ (they accepted either cash or card). She took Amy’s picture and had Amy sign her name (“exactly as it appears on your id”) about seven times. Finally, she handed over a piece of paper which, she explained, was Amy’s temporary driver license. It is valid for six months. When will we get the permanent card? We asked. She bobbed her head noncommittally and shrugged her shoulders. We all laughed. We were leaving the counter, done and dusted, at 9:37. Easy peasy.

We were M007 in the IMT box. Fourteen minutes before our appointment was scheduled to start, they were already helping someone two parties after us.

Hopefully, Scott will be able to complete the same process before his license expires in early March. His residency card just arrived yesterday⁶, he completed the form at IMT and uploaded all of the necessary documents, and got three emails from them in a span of five minutes, a faster pace than Amy had. (Nyah nyah!) Fingers crossed.

That’s all for now.

Love from Lisbon,

Scott & Amy

1. It probably took about week from the moment he read the instructions to having the driver records in hand: three or four days for the mail, a few days for processing, and a day or two to connect with the notary.

2. This process took a little longer - closer to two weeks - as the documentation was sent initially without the enclosed fee and without the proper affirmation by the notary. An extra round trip for the docs via the postal service and another visit to the notary added time.

3. This took a couple of weeks. The good news is it can be done concurrently with steps 1 and 2 (which are sequential) as it is an entirely separate process requiring different documents.

4. We’re also hearing advice that it might be worth getting a second copy of your US license before leaving the US so that when you surrender one in Portugal, you still have the second. We’ve read multiple accounts of IMT taking more than the six months that the temporary license is valid for to issue a permanent replacement. The temporary license may not be accepted as valid outside of Portugal.

5. Thanks, Diane!

6. The delay(s) was (were) due to a colossal and cascading series of mistakes and incorrect assumptions that he has made over the past eight months. One day in the distant future it might be a funny story. Sooner than that, it will probably be the subject of a post in this forum.