SR-22 in South Carolina: Two Official Fees, One Offence

Why every figure on this page expires, and the clause that says so

The sentence in § 56-10-520(D) that matters most is not the one with a number in it. It is this: the fee "may be adjusted annually, at the beginning of the calendar year, based upon and in relation to the average rate level for private passenger automobile insurance coverages by insurers in this State."

South Carolina indexes the penalty for going uninsured to the price of being insured. That is unusual enough to state plainly: when private passenger rates in the state rise, the reinstatement fee rises with them, by operation of statute. The mechanism has three moving parts, all in the same subsection. The Department of Insurance sets "the exact fee" by annual order. It must tell the SCDMV "by the first business day of October" what the figure will be for the coming calendar year. And the adjustment takes effect "at the beginning of the calendar year."

The consequence is not in the statute, and it applies to every page about this subject including this one: any number published for this fee has a shelf life of one calendar year. A figure read in November is a figure for a year about to end. The only date on which the current figure is reliably knowable is after the October notification, and the only body that holds it is the SCDMV. This page therefore treats $700 as what the agency published when it was read, not as what you will be charged.

It is also the reason no premium figures appear here at all: the one number in South Carolina's system that behaves like an insurance price is a state penalty, and the site's rule is that every dollar amount is a statutory limit or an agency fee. For how the money question breaks down elsewhere, see how much an SR-22 costs.

Where the uninsured-motorist money actually goes

Almost nothing written about South Carolina explains what happens to the fee after you pay it. The answer is a closed circuit, and it is documented in three places.

Collection first. Under § 56-10-552(A), every insured vehicle in the state contributes: of "each two dollars of the yearly premium for uninsured motorist coverage paid to the Department of Motor Vehicles" under § 38-73-470, one dollar twenty cents goes to the State Highway Fund and "the remaining eighty cents must be placed in a special fund, to be known as the 'Uninsured Enforcement Fund', to be used by the Department of Public Safety for the purpose of enforcement and administration of Article 3, Chapter 10, Title 56." The instrument is SCDMV Form FR-290, the Uninsured Motorist Enforcement Fund Quarterly Payment Report, which instructs insurers: "Fees are due for each vehicle for which a policy was written or renewed during the reporting period."

Then your reinstatement fee. Section 56-10-552(B) halves it: "Fifty percent of the reinstatement fee as provided by Section 56-10-520 must be transferred by the Department of Public Safety and recorded to the Uninsured Enforcement Fund", with the remainder retained in the Uninsured Motorist Fund under §§ 56-10-550, 38-77-151 and 38-77-154. On the SCDMV's published $700, that is $350 to police enforcement and $350 to the fund — our arithmetic on the agency's figure.

And then the fund pays it back to the insurance industry. The Department of Insurance's Bulletin Number 2025-03, issued to all insurers writing private passenger automobile business on 25 February 2025, describes the disbursement:

"Section 38-77-155 instructs the Director of the Department of Insurance to annually distribute monies from the Fund among the insurers writing motor vehicle bodily injury and property damage liability insurance on motor vehicles registered in this state."

The bulletin states the purpose in one sentence — "The purpose of the Fund is to reduce the cost of uninsured motorist insurance coverage" — allocates each carrier's share by its market share for the preceding calendar year, and tells carriers the money "must be accounted for as other income in accordance with the statutory guidance from the National Association of Insurance Commissioners." The 2025 distribution was calculated on 2023 market share.

So the structure is a closed loop: a levy on every insured vehicle, plus half of every uninsured driver's reinstatement fee, pooled with the state and handed back each year to insurers in proportion to their market share, for the declared purpose of holding down the cost of the coverage that protects everyone else from uninsured drivers. Whether it succeeds is not something this page can measure. What it does mean is that the reinstatement fee is not a fine in the ordinary sense. The bulletin also carries its own limit: "Bulletins are departmental interpretations of South Carolina insurance laws and regulations and provide guidance on the Department's enforcement approach. Bulletins do not provide legal advice."

Three live texts that still point at the repealed section

Section 56-10-510 has read "Reserved" since 1 July 2024. Three documents that are in force today have not caught up, and two of them are the ones a driver actually meets.

A live statute requires you to carry proof under it. Section 56-10-225(A) says an owner whose registration has been approved "must maintain in the motor vehicle at all times proof that the motor vehicle is an insured vehicle in conformity with the laws of this State and Section 56-10-510." The section it names is now three words of white space. The obligation is real and enforceable under subsection (C); the cross-reference is not.

A live SCDMV form still offers the repealed option. Form FR-402, the vehicle renewal insurance certification, prints this note directly beneath the perjury declaration: "NOTE: If you don't have insurance, you may be eligible to pay an uninsured motorist fee. Contact your local DMV Office for more information." The form is marked Rev. 4/05 and was still on the SCDMV's forms index in the snapshot read for this page, more than eighteen months after the option it describes ceased to exist. A driver who follows that instruction will be told at the counter that there is nothing to pay.

A live definition describes a fund fed by a source that no longer exists. Section 56-9-20(15) defines the fund the money above flows through: "'Uninsured Motorist Fund' means a fund established for fees collected by the director of the Department of Motor Vehicles from registration of uninsured vehicles." Nobody registers an uninsured vehicle any more. The fund is still fed — by the per-vehicle levy and by half of each reinstatement fee, under § 56-10-552 — but not by anything its own definition names.

There is a fourth dangling reference in the same chapter, and it is older. Section 56-9-570 conditions the surety bond "for payment of the amounts specified in item (13) of Section 56-9-20." Item (13) of § 56-9-20, as the Code reads today, is the definition of the word "State": "Any state, territory or possession of the United States, the District of Columbia or any province of the Dominion of Canada." The financial responsibility amounts are in item (11). The 2023 amendment took care to correct two similar internal references in that same section — the Effect of Amendment note records that Act No. 51 "in (1), substituted 'item (5)' for 'item (7)'" and "in (14), substituted 'item (1)' for 'item (3)'" — and left the one in § 56-9-570 alone.

None of this changes what you owe. It changes how much of what you read on a state website you should treat as current, and it is the reason this page quotes section numbers and revision dates rather than paraphrasing.

Three property-damage thresholds for the same collision

Ask when a collision drags you into South Carolina's financial responsibility system and the Code gives three different answers, in three sections, all in force. This comparison is built for this page; no state document sets the three side by side.

What the threshold triggers	Property-damage figure	Deadline attached	Section, read 2026-09-02
Investigating officer must hand you an insurance verification form, which you return or be presumed uninsured	"four hundred dollars or more"	Return the completed form within fifteen days	§ 56-9-350
SCDMV must suspend the licence of an owner-driver and all registrations unless security is deposited	"two hundred dollars or more"	Notice at least ten days before the suspension takes effect	§ 56-9-351
You must self-report a collision no officer investigated	"one thousand dollars or more"	Written report and insurance verification within fifteen days	§ 56-5-1270

Two observations the sources do not make.

The reporting threshold is five times the suspension threshold. A collision causing $500 of damage that no officer attended needs no report from you under § 56-5-1270 — and still meets the § 56-9-351 threshold for suspending your licence and every registration in your name if the department learns of it another way. The gap between $200 and $1,000 is the space in which a driver can be entirely compliant with the reporting statute and exposed under the security statute.

Silence is treated as proof against you. Both reporting sections end the same way: failure to return the verified form "is prima facie evidence that the vehicle was uninsured." Not a presumption of lateness — a presumption of no insurance. And the floor for the security itself is fixed: § 56-9-359 lets the department reduce an excessive demand but says "in no case shall the Department reduce the amount of security to a sum less than two hundred dollars."

Where the three years is counted from

The SCDMV says three years "starting with the date of suspension." The statute says something different, and the difference can be months.

S.C. Code § 56-9-620 is the release provision. It requires the department to consent to cancelling the certificate:

"At any time after three years from the date the proof was required when, during the three year period preceding the request, the Department has not received record of a conviction or a forfeiture of bail which would require or permit the suspension or revocation of the license, registration, or nonresident's operating or registration privilege of the person by or for whom the proof was furnished"

"From the date the proof was required" is not the same anchor as "the date of suspension." Both dates exist in your file; they are usually not the same day. Following the contract this site publishes, both sources appear here with their origin and neither is averaged: the DMV's operational statement is the one that will govern what a clerk does, and the statutory anchor is the one to quote if the two ever have to be reconciled. Ask the SCDMV for both dates in writing. Where each state starts counting sets the anchors out side by side, and South Carolina is one of the states where the agency and the code use different language for the same clock.

Two further conditions sit on top of the three years, and neither is a matter of counting.

A clean three-year stretch, not a calendar. The release only comes if "during the three year period preceding the request" the Department has received no qualifying conviction or bail forfeiture. That makes the period a stretch to complete rather than a countdown to endure, and it is the usual reason a filing runs longer than expected. How long SR-22 lasts by state covers how other states word the same restart.

An extra one-year accident-free window. The proviso at the end of § 56-9-620 is almost never mentioned. The Department must not consent to cancellation where the person "has, within one year immediately preceding the request, been involved as an operator or owner in any motor vehicle accident resulting in injury or damage to the person or property of others" — nor while any action for damages on a covered liability is pending. So an at-fault-free three years can still be blocked by an accident in month 34, regardless of who caused it. An affidavit that these facts do not exist is accepted "in the absence of evidence to the contrary in the records of the Department"; the SCDMV prints it as Form FR-27 for the return of a security deposit and Form FR-28 for the restoration of privileges, both opening with the same warning against signing while any suit is pending.

And surrendering the licence does not end it. Section 56-9-630 provides that a person whose proof was cancelled because they handed in their licence, who then applies again "within a period of three years from the date proof was originally required," will be refused "unless the applicant shall re-establish the proof for the remainder of the three year period."

The other three-year obligation, and a deadline the agency states two ways

There is a second three-year requirement in South Carolina that nobody calls an SR-22, and it catches the driver who did the right thing.

Section 56-10-46 applies to "a person responding to the notice contained in Section 56-10-40 who purchased insurance after receiving the notice." Their record is flagged, and then:

"The person shall be required to provide proof of coverage as prescribed by regulation every seven months for a period of three years."

Read the trigger. It is not a conviction. It is not a suspension. It is buying insurance in response to a lapse notice — the compliant response. Do that, and for the next three years you owe the SCDMV a proof of coverage roughly every seven months, which works out to five separate submissions. That is an administrative three-year obligation running in parallel to, and independent of, any Certificate of Insurance filing, and it appears on no SCDMV page this page could reach.

The notice that starts it comes with a deadline that the state states in two lengths. The SCDMV's Facts About Driving Uninsured page says you will get "a letter that requires you to have the insurance company electronically verify insurance coverage within 20 business days," and then, one sentence later, sets out what happens "If the SCDMV does not receive verification within 20 days." Twenty business days and twenty days are not the same window — roughly four weeks against under three.

The statute settles it. Section 56-10-650(A) provides that where the database indicates a vehicle is not insured, "the department shall notify the owner of the motor vehicle that he has twenty working days to provide the department with one of the following, or the owner's driving privileges and the vehicle license plates will be suspended." Twenty working days, in the section that creates the notice. The agency's page is right in one sentence and loose in the next; the longer reading is the one the General Assembly wrote. Work to it, and get the transmission confirmed rather than assuming it has gone, because the same chapter gives the suspension no notice period of its own: under § 56-10-30, if the required security lapses, the registration and driving privileges are "as of the date the security lapses or terminates, automatically suspended and must remain suspended until the security is replaced."

Filing and verification are electronic. The SCDMV's vehicle owner insurance requirements page explains the channel: "South Carolina verifies vehicle liability insurance electronically through the Automobile Liability Insurance Reporting (ALIR) system. Licensed insurance companies automatically transmit policy changes to the SCDMV to ensure continuous coverage." Cancellations are on a clock too — § 56-10-551 requires an insurer whose certified policy is cancelled to report it "within fifteen days after the cancellation." The same page is blunt about the interim: "While under suspension, you may not drive or register any vehicle without insurance. If you do not return your plate to the SCDMV, a law enforcement officer will take it from you."

What the certificate itself has to say

South Carolina is unusually specific about the instrument, and this is the section that costs money if you have ever let a policy lapse for non-payment. Section 56-9-550 governs the Certificate of Insurance, and it sets four terms that are worth knowing before you buy.

The policy underneath has a minimum term. "The policy must be written for a minimum term of six months." A one-month or three-month policy cannot support the filing.

The certificate has its own minimum life. "A certificate or notice of insurance shall remain in full force and effect for a period of at least ninety days unless the certificate or notice is canceled by the insurance company for some reason other than nonpayment of premium." Inside those first ninety days, non-payment does not release the insurer from the filing.

A previous non-payment lapse changes what you have to buy. This is the consequence nobody writes down. The department may refuse a certificate filed:

"for a person who previously has had a certificate or notice canceled for nonpayment of premium, unless the policy under which the certificate or notice is issued is certified to be noncancellable for a period of one year for nonpayment of premium."

Read that as a rule about your own history. Miss a payment once on a South Carolina filing and your next certificate has to be non-cancellable for a full year for non-payment — an instrument an insurer will price differently, because it has surrendered its main remedy. The cheapest thing you can do in South Carolina is not shop harder; it is not lapse. Anyone arriving here from driving without insurance should treat that sentence as the whole financial argument for paying on time.

Every vehicle must be named. "No motor vehicle may be or may continue to be registered in the name of a person required to file proof of financial responsibility unless the motor vehicle is designated in the certificate or notice." Buy a second car during the filing period and it cannot stay registered until it is added.

One more layer sits underneath, in chapter 10, and it does not match. Section 56-10-280(A) requires policies issued to meet the chapter's requirements to be "issued for not less than six months" and provides that one "remains in effect at least sixty days notwithstanding a power of attorney which may purport to give the attorney-in-fact the right to effect cancellation on behalf of the insured." It then lists four grounds for cancelling inside those sixty days, the fourth being non-payment — and for that one the policy "must remain in effect for at least thirty days." So the same instrument carries a ninety-day floor as a certificate under chapter 9 and a thirty-day floor as a policy cancelled for non-payment under chapter 10. Both are current; if your policy is certified, the ninety-day sentence in § 56-9-550 is the one to quote.

Ways out that are not "wait three years"

Chapters 9 and 10 contain a set of exits that almost no page about South Carolina mentions. Not all will apply to you; each is worth checking before you assume the only route is time.

Someone else's proof can cover you. Section 56-9-590 provides that where the person required to give proof is an employee of a vehicle owner, or "a member of the immediate family or household of the owner," the department "shall accept proof given by the owner in lieu of proof by the other person," subject to restrictions the department designates; §§ 56-9-361 and 56-9-460 do the same for an employee driving an employer's vehicle. For a driver living in a household with an insured vehicle that is a materially different conversation to have with the SCDMV than shopping for an individual filing, and it is the mirror image of non-owner SR-22 insurance. The other side of the same coin is Form FR-9B, which lets an insurer exclude a named person from a household policy under § 38-77-340 — but only on proof that the excluded driver surrendered their licence or has coverage of their own.

A property-tax suspension has its own waiver, and a first unlicensed offence has an exemption. Section 56-9-505 is short and specific: an individual suspended "for failure to pay property taxes may request that the Department of Motor Vehicle waive the financial responsibility requirements provided for in Chapter 9 of Title 56, upon providing proof to the department that such taxes have been paid." And § 56-9-530 exempts a person who has never held a licence and who "has been convicted one time of operating a motor vehicle on the highways of the State without a license while driving an insured vehicle."

Military service and documented illness cancel the lapse penalties. Section 56-10-245 waives both the per diem fine and the $200 reinstatement fee where the owner furnishes proof, "as documented by his sworn statement," that the vehicle "has not been operated upon the roads, streets, or highways of this State during the lapse or termination, and the lapse or termination is due to military service or illness as documented by a signed physician's statement."

Proof of insurance at the time of an accident bars the suspension. On the chapter 10 accident track, § 56-10-530 states that presenting "a certificate of insurance, executed by an agent or representative of an insurance company qualified to do business in this State, showing that on the date and at the time of the accident the vehicle was an insured motor vehicle as herein defined is sufficient bar to the suspension provided for in this section." The same section guarantees a contested case hearing before the Office of Motor Vehicle Hearings before the suspension takes effect. On the chapter 9 track, § 56-9-363 gives thirty days to request one, "in order that he might prove that no reasonable possibility exists that a civil court might enter a judgment against him," with appeal to the Administrative Law Court. Section 56-9-354(2) closes an accident file outright once "two years shall have elapsed following the date of the accident" with no action instituted, and § 56-9-352 lists nine situations in which the security requirement never applies at all.

Instalments keep a judgment suspension off you. Where the suspension comes from an unpaid judgment, § 56-9-490 lets the debtor apply to the court that entered it to pay by instalments, and the SCDMV shall restore privileges "when the judgment debtor gives proof of financial responsibility and obtains an order permitting the payment of the judgment in installments and while the payment of any installment is not in default." The paperwork is Form FR-230, with a court-approved variant FR-230A that the form says is "only applicable if suspension resulted from an unsatisfied judgment." What does not work here: § 56-9-470 states that "a discharge in bankruptcy following the rendering of any judgment shall not relieve the judgment debtor from any of the requirements of this article."

And there is a hardship licence, in two places. South Carolina does not advertise it as one, but §§ 56-9-430(B) and 56-10-260(B) both let a person suspended under those sections who "is employed or enrolled in a college or university" apply for "a special restricted driver's license permitting him to drive only to and from work or his place of education." Both require proof "that he lives further than one mile from his place of employment or place of education", both set the fee at one hundred dollars, and both make driving outside the designated times or routes a separate offence under § 56-1-460. The chapter 10 version adds a condition the chapter 9 version does not: "The department may not issue the special restricted driver's license until proof of financial responsibility has been filed."

Handing in the plate before cancelling avoids the penalty entirely. The SCDMV states this outright on Facts About Driving Uninsured: "If you turn in your license plate and registration to an SCDMV branch before you cancel the insurance, you will not be penalized." The statute behind it is § 56-10-240(C), in a single sentence: "A person who voluntarily surrenders his license plates and registration certificates before their suspension shall not be charged a reinstatement fee." That is the single cheapest piece of information on this page for someone about to lay a car up — and the sequence is the whole of it: plate first, cancellation second.

And if you have already been stopped without proof in hand, there is a window. The SCDMV's driver insurance requirements page says: "If the officer writes you a ticket for not providing proof, you must provide proof of insurance within 30 days. By showing proof, you may avoid a driver's license suspension. If your license is suspended, you will owe $100 to reinstate your license." That is thirty days from the ticket, not from a court date, and § 56-10-225(C) is the statutory backstop: "a charge of failing to maintain proof that a motor vehicle is insured must be dismissed if the person provides proof to the court that the motor vehicle was insured on the date of the violation."

What I could not verify

Which Department of Insurance order sets $700, and for which calendar year. Section 56-10-520(D) makes the exact fee a matter of annual DOI order, and the SCDMV publishes $700. No order later than 2019 could be located on doi.sc.gov from this server. The one document I could retrieve — Order No. 2019-03, Order Changing Uninsured Motorist Fee — downloads as a two-page scanned image with no text layer; pdftotext returned two bytes from it on 2 September 2026, so not one line of it is quoted here, and it predates the 2023 amendment in any case. Confirm the figure with the SCDMV before you send money, and expect it to change at the start of a calendar year.

Whether the $100 the SCDMV charges a non-owner operator has a statutory basis. Section 56-10-520(C), the subsection covering the operator who is not the owner, imposes a thirty-day wait and names no fee. The $100 appears on the SCDMV's Insurance Requirements page. It may well be authorised elsewhere in the Code or by regulation; this page read both chapters 9 and 10 in full and did not find it, and says so rather than attributing it to a section.

Anything read directly from dmv.sc.gov. Every direct request to dmv.sc.gov returned HTTP 403 to this server on 2 September 2026, both through a plain fetch and with a browser user agent. Every SCDMV quotation and form here therefore comes from Internet Archive snapshots of those same URLs, and each link points at the snapshot rather than the live page. If the live page now says something different, the live page wins. Form FR-402 in particular is marked Rev. 4/05 and may since have been corrected.

The regulations the statutes delegate to. Sections 56-10-40, 56-10-46, 56-10-640 and 56-10-650 all hang requirements on procedures "prescribed by regulation." Those regulations are not in Title 56 and were not read for this page, so the seven-month reporting cycle in § 56-10-46 is given as the statute states it, with nothing added about the form it takes.

Whether the SCDMV recalculates the period after a second suspension. An earlier version of this page said it did. That claim could not be located in either chapter, nor on any SCDMV page reached here, so it has been removed rather than repeated. What the statute does provide is § 56-9-620(1): a qualifying conviction inside the window prevents release, which has a similar effect without being a recalculation. Which of the two start-date anchors a clerk applies to your file is likewise an operational fact this page cannot settle.

Frequently Asked Questions

Can I still pay a fee to drive uninsured in South Carolina? No, and this is the biggest thing that has changed. Section 56-10-510, the provision that allowed an uninsured motor vehicle to be registered on payment of a fee, was reserved by 2023 Act No. 51, section 5, with effect from 1 July 2024 — an act the General Assembly summarises as "Auto Dealers", whose section 29 directed the SCDMV to "ensure that no one is registered as an uninsured motorist on the effective date of this act." What exists in its place is a penalty under § 56-10-520: a suspension of your licence, plates and registration certificates, plus a reinstatement fee, plus a Certificate of Insurance filing for three years. Two live texts still point at the repealed section — § 56-10-225(A) and SCDMV Form FR-402, which still invites you to pay the fee — so a page or a form telling you the option exists is not proof that it does.

Is the South Carolina reinstatement fee $600 or $700? Both figures are published by the state, and they are not in conflict so much as at different stages. Section 56-10-520(D) fixes $600 as the statutory baseline "until adjusted," and then provides that the Department of Insurance sets the exact fee by annual order, indexed to the average rate level for private passenger automobile insurance in South Carolina. The SCDMV's own page says the suspension continues "until the SCDMV receives the $700 uninsured motorist fee." The DMV's number is the one that will actually clear your suspension. Because the fee is reset annually and notified to the DMV by the first business day of October, confirm the current figure with the SCDMV rather than relying on any published number, including this one.

How long do I need an SR-22 in South Carolina, and from when? Three years, but the two official sources anchor it differently and this page will not split the difference. The SCDMV says three years "starting with the date of suspension." Section 56-9-620(1) permits cancellation "at any time after three years from the date the proof was required." Those are usually different dates. On top of the three years, the statute requires that no qualifying conviction or bail forfeiture has been received during the three years preceding your request, and separately blocks release if you have been in an accident causing injury or damage within the one year immediately preceding it. Note also the separate three-year obligation in § 56-10-46: if you bought insurance in response to a lapse notice, you owe the department proof of coverage "every seven months for a period of three years."

What happens if I miss a payment on my South Carolina filing? More than a lapse notice, and this is the consequence worth avoiding. Section 56-9-550 lets the department refuse a certificate filed for a person "who previously has had a certificate or notice canceled for nonpayment of premium, unless the policy under which the certificate or notice is issued is certified to be noncancellable for a period of one year for nonpayment of premium." So one non-payment cancellation means the next certificate has to be non-cancellable for a full year against non-payment. Separately, the certificate stays in force for at least ninety days regardless, your insurer must report any cancellation of a certified policy to the SCDMV within fifteen days under § 56-10-551, and § 56-10-245 adds a per diem fine of five dollars for each day of the gap, capped at $200 per vehicle for a first offence.

I got a ticket for not showing proof of insurance. How long do I have? Thirty days from the ticket, per the SCDMV: "If the officer writes you a ticket for not providing proof, you must provide proof of insurance within 30 days. By showing proof, you may avoid a driver's license suspension. If your license is suspended, you will owe $100 to reinstate your license." Section 56-10-225(C) backs it up: the charge "must be dismissed if the person provides proof to the court that the motor vehicle was insured on the date of the violation." Note that this is the no-proof-in-the-vehicle situation, which is different from actually being uninsured. If instead an insurer reports a cancellation, § 56-10-650(A) gives you "twenty working days" to have coverage verified — which is the longer of the two figures the SCDMV's own page prints for that window.

What does an SR-22 cost in South Carolina, and which part of it can I check? This page names no insurer and publishes no premium, because no company publishes a rate for an individual record and an average built from other drivers is not a price for yours. What is worth knowing is where the money actually is, and most of it is not in the policy. The state's own fee for an owner is $700 as the SCDMV publishes it, against $100 for a non-owner operator, so whose name is on the registration matters more than any quote spread. Surrendering the plate before you cancel the insurance removes the reinstatement fee entirely under § 56-10-240(C). A single non-payment lapse forces your next certificate to be non-cancellable for a year, which costs more than any shopping saves. Section 56-9-590 may let an insured household member's proof cover you instead of your own filing; § 56-9-505 waives the requirement where the suspension came from unpaid property tax; and § 56-10-245 waives the fine and the fee where the lapse was due to military service or documented illness and the car was not driven. Get your period and your fee from the SCDMV in writing first, then take three quotes against that term and ask for the cost of the policy, the mandatory uninsured motorist coverage and the insurer's filing charge as three separate numbers.