What to Expect from Bail Bonds

Bail bonds are a surety that is put up by a professional bail bondsman or corporation to ensure your appearance at your trial; in exchange you are out on bail instead of waiting in a jail cell for your trial.

Making bail is important for several reasons. The most obvious reason is it makes you look less guilty if you aren’t serving time in jail for a crime you haven’t even been convicted of yet. And just as importantly, bail keeps you free and allows you to keep working to earn a living. Lawyers are just one expense you will endure if you are facing criminal charges, you will also face the prospect of paying court fines, fees and restitution if you are actually convicted on the charges. With these impending and current legal bills, it’s not a good time to loose your income.

In exchange for posting your bail bond, your bail bondsman will charge you ten percent or slightly more of your total bail amount. The bondsman will put up ten percent of the total cash bail required by the court to meet your bail bonds amount. If you are facing a huge bail amount you may need to put up a security pledge such as a home mortgage to ensure if you don’t make it to court, the bail bondsman isn’t mortgaging his home to pay your forfeited bail.

There are only a handful of states that don’t allow bail bondsmen to post your bail including Oregon, Wisconsin, Illinois and Kentucky. These states will allow the defendant to post ten percent of their bail as surety to get out on bail. However if the initial bail amount is high, ten percent may be more than many people can come up with. It can become a catch 22 when you can’t work to pay your bail or your attorney because you’re stuck in jail unable to make bail.

For states that allow bail bondsmen to post bail bonds for clients the amount of bail required generally needs to be high enough to make it worth while for the bondsman. For example if the bail amount is $1,000 the ten percent required is only $100 and the bondsman would hardly make enough on the transaction with their ten percent cut to make the case worth their time.
The risk to the bail bondsman is if the accused decides to jump bail and run. Unless the police or the bondsman recaptures a bail bonds jumper, the money is forfeited to the courts and any assets held as security are also lost.

Since there is an inherited risk in making your bail, a bondsman will probably check in on you to make sure you are where you are supposed to be, especially as your court date nears. And if the bondsman feels there is an unacceptable risk that you will become a bail jumper they can have the bond rescinded and you will go back to jail until your trial.