Wednesday, May 23, 2018

Showing Up Is Oftimes Half The Battle

Failing to show up by contrast causes you to lose, and lose badly, and can make other people lose too.

Yes, it's another call from a potential and unlikely-to-actually-retain-me client.

Apparently she had put up a bail bond for her boyfriend. Yes, you can see where this is going already, can't you?

Boyfriend however has decided he doesn't want to go to jail.

The pre-sentencing report apparently does show that he is indeed going to jail for his offense, but he didn't want to go just yet, and decided to skip his sentencing hearing. This decision makes the court distinctly unhappy.

This of course triggers forfeiture of his bond, so the 10% cash she put down is going bye-bye, and the court has scheduled a show cause for next week for her to show up to pay the remaining and quite significant 90%.

There are things that can be done to fix this, but the most important requirement is he has to turn himself in or be apprehended before the show cause to make this work.

He doesn't want to turn himself in just yet apparently because he has a family event he'd rather not miss coming up in a week or so.

Now, had he communicated with the court about this instead of skipping the sentencing hearing, the court likely would have granted him some time to go to the event and all would be well. Instead, now he's looking instead to get thrown in jail immediately the minute any officer happens to come across him, and my bet is they will be looking for him at the event as they're not dumb, and his girlfriend is about to lose lots of money.

I advised her that she does need an attorney for the process to try to prevent her bond being forfeited and a major requirement to have a shot at getting the bond money back is the boyfriend needs to turn himself in before that hearing next week happens. My bet is I won't be retained, he won't turn himself in, and she will be paying thousands of dollars to the court or will be joining him in jail.

This is why you don't lend money on behalf of, or to, known criminals, your chance of getting it back is rather slim.

3 comments:

MrGarabaldi said...

Hey Aaron;

You can't fix stupid and some people can't get past the part, I wonder if this women has a martyr complex or really low self esteem. Yep, she will be out quite a bit of money and the chances of her getting it back is slim and that is the sad thing.

Old NFO said...

Agree with Mr.G Sigh...

Aaron said...

MrGarabaldi: You're right stupid is its own special curse. Hard to say why she was silly enough to out up the money for him, my bet is "she loves him" and that is stopping her from thinking in a coherent manner.

Old NFO: Yep, some people can't be helped, and then some people won't listen even when they're the ones that asked you for help and they go on to merrily ignore what you tell them.