Can you still trade your car in if you are behind on car payments? ?

This is a massively BAD idea for a whole host of reasons.

Since you chose not say what make, model and year of car you currently have, we cannot look up it's values online to see how deep in the hole you are. But, the likelihood is that you ARE in the hole, in that even a private sale retail value on your car would be less than your current loan balance. That means that to JUST get rid of your current car, you'd not only have to hand it over to a buyer, but you'd have to PAY serious money, likely four digits to just get rid of it and start with NO car and no loan outstanding.

Next, an SUV as a family car is a really stupid choice. SUVs are popular with car makers because they are not covered by many of the safety regs that apply to passenger cars, so SUVs can be made more cheaply which means more profit to the car company, while buyers get shitty vehicles.

Here's one more reason why SUVs are shitty vehicles. Because their floors have to be raised, to give room underneath to go off road, the distance between the floor and ceiling is less than an equally tall minivan has, and that translates into far LESS interior volume in the SUV, compared to an equivalently sized minivan, and the minivan, because it IS legally classified as a passenger vehicle, is covered by those many safety regs that the SUV isn't covered by.

So, a good minvan isn't most costly, gets at least as good mileage, has more interior space and is safer. That's the way to go, *especially* if you want to keep your kids safe.

Financially, trading now will cost you thousands unnecessarily. Keep the current car, pay down it's loan, and leave a bigger car until later, when the kids are larger and need an actual seat rather than a carseat.

You can't make the payments on the car that you have, but you want to trade it in for a bigger payment?  You are not making sense.

No - you can't trade in a car that is likely to be repossessed soon.

The car is not yours until you have made all the payments. You cannot trade it in.

You can but the credit report will shut everything down.

You probably would not qualify because your credit would not be good enough. One late payment a year ago would be ok. 3 recent payments behind. You must be joking.  Id wager the repo men are looking for it as I type.

I think it would be like anything else if your 15k in arrears then even if you sell the car you would still owe 15k it won't just go away and trust me when i say just because you sell something doesn't mean your creditors are going to leave it there. They will always want their money and will chase you for it.

Great - you can't pay your bills......so you have a kid.  Brilliant.

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added:  OIC:  you COULD pay your bills, you just didn't.  Brilliant.

If your credit isn't bad and you have proof of decent income, a used car dealer might let you do that.  But expect to get ripped off.  They won't give you fair market value and you will have an even bigger loan.