Kentucky Gold Star License Plates

KRS 186.041(6) provides that a person eligible to receive a Gold Star Mothers, Gold Star Fathers, or Gold Star Spouses license plate under KRS 186.164(16)(a) may receive up to two such plates free of charge, and may purchase additional plates by paying the same fee as for special military-related plates under KRS 186.162(2)(d), which is twenty-three dollars annually and falls to seventeen on January 1, 2027. The two free plates are the part that goes missing. Published summaries of Kentucky's Gold Star plate quote a single fee - thirty-one dollars initial and thirty-one renewal is the figure in circulation - and describe no free allocation at all. Neither the fee nor the omission matches the statute. A Gold Star parent or spouse should not pay for a first or second plate, and a family with two vehicles should not pay for either. Eligibility runs to the immediate family of a servicemember who died while serving in the Armed Forces, in the categories the plate names: mothers, fathers, and spouses. Kentucky issues the plate through the county clerk, but verification runs through the Kentucky Department of Veterans Affairs first. Contact KDVA to have eligibility verified, then apply at the county clerk with that verification. The third and subsequent plates fall into the general military band under KRS 186.162(2)(d), which also holds the ordinary service plates and the fifty-to-ninety-nine percent disabled veteran plate. Of that fee, five dollars is directed to the veterans' program trust fund under KRS 40.460. A separate provision worth knowing for a surviving spouse who is not claiming under the Gold Star category: KRS 186.041(7) lets the surviving spouse of a Purple Heart recipient, or of a Kentucky National Guard member or retired member, retain that member's plate and renew it indefinitely on payment of the annual registration fee. A family may therefore hold both a Gold Star plate and a retained Purple Heart plate.