How do I un-steal power armor?

I noticed that when I destroy enemies' fusion cores in the power armor they use, they get out, and I'm able to take it. However, most companions do not like if you steal things. I respect that, so I usually leave these power armor frames for display in my settlements. However, in order to move them around when I remodel my settlements, it counts as stealing the frame every time I enter it, which causes me to lose affinity with all of the companions I have in that settlement.

Am I doing something wrong or this a bug? I feel like it shouldn't count as stealing every time I enter it...

Solution 1:

Unfortunately, the vanilla game treats taking or entering owned power armor as stealing, even if the previous owner is no longer among the living.

If you're on PC, you can open the console, click the power armor frame, type ClearOwnership, then hit enter. Also works for things like beds and all the containers in Covenant. SetOwnership npcRefId allows setting a specific NPC as owner. I've heard you can use it without an ID to have the same effect as ClearOwnership.

If you're on a console, I don't believe there's a solution to the frame itself. However, you can clear ownership of the individual parts by reverse-pickpocketing them onto a settler, then doing a normal trade to take it back. Alternately, Timmy Jim says you can just park the frame in a power armor station, remove the parts, then they're unowned.

I know there's at least one mod that lets you scrap and rebuild the frames (clearing ownership in the process), but I don't believe it's been ported to console.