As I'm working through details of attic insulation, I have a question regarding garage attic space and house attic space.

I don't have building inspections in my house since I'm out in the country and our county doesn't have an adopted building code so technically I don't need to follow anything. But I still want to do things properly.

I know that the IRC 2006 requires that the garage be separated from the house and its attic by at least 1/2" drywall on the garage side. In the nearby town, they take this to mean that you put drywall on the garage walls and the ceiling, and have to seal any penetrations in the wall and ceiling with something that will keep the fire barrier.

We're not planning on heating our garage, so I'm not sure that I have an interest in putting insulation up there, so I'm wondering, do you just stop the insulation in the house attic at the wall between garage and house?

If it is true that you have to keep the fire barrier on the garage side intact, does that mean I couldn't put an access to the attic in the garage? Or is there a way to do that so that the attic entrance is part of the fire barrier? I am interested in using attic stairs in the garage to store a few things on the rafters, and I figured the house attic can be reached from this location since there isn't any wall or anything like that in the attic. Do I need more than one attic access location?

Thanks for any comments or suggestions.

Yes, you can stop the insulation at the garage/house junction. If you have vented attic space and blown insulation, you may want to make some accomodation to stop the insulation from 'drifting' over into the garage area.
As to the location of your attic access door, I'm not sure about the current codes, but it is commonplace to put the door in the garage area, here, and I can see no practical reason to not place it in the garage area.

Thanks wes. Yes, we're having a vented attic, but now we are thinking of making the wall between garage and house a fire-rated wall, so that would involve going all the way to the roof. But things aren't certain, so we are looking into it. We have a fire-rated door between garage and house now, so it's a matter of adding the 5/8" drywall to both sides of that wall to make it I think 1 hr fire rated.
I guess this would mean that I would need my attic access inside the house somewhere, unless I can put a fire-rated door up in the attic between garage and house attice and still locate the access point in the garage.
This would solve the issue of keeping the insulation in the house attic too.

Anyone done something like this? Thanks.

Here we have inspections and the fire wall between a house and attached garage would be a rated fire door as an entrance door to the house, 1/2" interior side drywall and 5/8" drywall on the garage side either all the way up including the truss or the wall between the house/garage and the garage ceiling with all seams and butt joints taped. If there is wire coming out of the attic into the garage you need to piece around it and tape the area.
Here I've been allowed to use a piece of drywall in a frame held by screws as an access into the truss area in residential work as long as there is no exposed wood frame, everything is drywalled and taped; the only time I've seen small fire doors requirements is in commercial work or apartment buildings.

Thanks greentree. I was looking at the gypsum manual for fire rated construction, so that's where I got the 5/8" type X on both sides of the wall for a 1 hr rating. The door we have right now is a solid fibergrass door filled with what looks like some type of cement (very heavy) and is self closing, rated at either 20 min or 45 min. Can't remember off the top of my head which one we ended up purchasing.
Maybe I should talk to my friend who knows the fire-marshall and see what they would allow in the nearby town for the access to attic area and if a piece of drywall covering the access would be good enough for them around here. Again, thanks for the suggestion!