In Florida, when a person is arrested, they are taken before a judge at a hearing called “first appearance.” This usually happens within 24 hours of arrest. At this hearing, the judge can either set a bond, can deny bond or can change the amount of a bond (this is also the hearing where most public defender appointments occur, assuming the defendant qualifies for one).

What if you want to bond someone out of jail, but their bond is too large?

One option is to have the defendant request a bond reduction hearing. This hearing is usually set by the defendant’s attorney, and most of the time will be held before the judge assigned to the defendant’s case (there is a good chance that this judge will be a different one than the one from the first appearance hearing). If the person in jail was arrested on a warrant, however, the bond amount on that warrant, if there is a bond, is usually set by the same judge who will be the judge at the bond reduction hearing.

If you do not want to wait to see if the bond will be lowered at a later date, or if the judge has not lowered the bond sufficiently at a previously held bond hearing, there is another option. You can contact a bail bondsman and see if he or she will take a partial payment of the bail bond fee up front and set you up on a payment plan. You probably will be asked to sign a promissory note to guarantee the balance of the fee, but often, if a large amount is owed, the bondsman may hold property or may take a mortgage on real property to guarantee the balance.

And remember, if you co-sign to guarantee a bond premium, you can be and probably will be sued if you miss one or more payments, and you risk losing any tangible property you may have put up to secure the debt.

Know what your obligations and risks are before you co-sign on a bail bond. Co-signing on a bond is not like writing a letter of recommendation for an individual–it carries a real financial risk to the signer. You are guaranteeing an accused defendant’s appearance in court, for each and every court date that the person is required to make, until the charges against that defendant are terminated.

Co-signing usually involves the signing of a promissory note or an indemnity agreement, each of which financially obligates you up to the full amount of the bail bond you are guaranteeing. Many times these instruments (the promissory note or indemnity agreement) are executed in conjunction with your pledging tangible property (i.e. cash, a real estate mortgage, a lien on an automobile, an assignment on a bank account, or even the pledging of household property, like electronics and jewelry).

One of the most important questions a cosigner should ask is this: How long am I financially responsible if I cosign on a bond?

* Until the person you have signed for is sentenced on his or her cases. This includes sentences of probation, fines, jail or prison time.

* When the charges are dropped.

* When sentences are deferred. This includes pre-trial intervention or deferred prosecution, or an adjudication of guilt.

* When the bondsman returns the defendant to jail (or when the defendant gets arrested on new charges) and the bondsman revokes the original bond (this procedure is also called “off bonding”).

* When the judge revokes the bond, and returns the defendant to custody, due to a violation of a bond condition. This is not the same as forfeiting the bail bond-the co-signer should not be out any money in this case.

* 36 months after a bail bond is executed. After this amount of time has passed, all bail bonds are automatically cancelled by state statute.

Before signing to guarantee a bail bond, make sure you really know the person you are signing for, and be sure that the person is trustworthy. If things “go south” and your instincts tell you that the person may become a flight risk, contact the bail bondsman immediately. The bondsman can then try to find the individual and have him or her returned to jail. In this instance, only when the person is behind bars does your financial obligation terminate.

If you have any questions about the risks of cosigning on a bail bond, feel free to call me at 352/376-6645. Rick Roundtree

People often ask “Why should I pay a bail bondsman a 10% fee for a bail bond if I have the money to put up for a cash bond?” That’s a good question. In the old days, when a person deposited the bond amount in cash, all of the money was returned to the depositor when the case was over.

A few years ago, however, the Florida legislature changed the laws so that the judge could order fines and court costs taken from the cash deposit. With government entities so cash-strapped now, often a very large percentage of the deposited money is being taken out of the cash bond amount. Sometimes they will take all of it. And sometimes in some counties they will even take cash bonds to pay older fines.

But when a bail agent writes the bond, the 10 per cent bail bond fee is all a person is ever going to pay (unless there is a breach of the bond due to the defendant’s nonappearance in court. But that’s another blog topic for another day). Most bail agencies will notify the indemnitors of all court dates for defendants, and having the co-signer aware of all of the court dates makes it more likely that the defendant will make all of his (or her) court apprearances.

Before you become an indemnitor on a bail bond, you should know what your responsibilities include. In Florida, if a person released on a bail bond fails to show in court, the bail agent has 60 days to return the defendant to custody. If the person bonded out cannot be returned to jail in that period, the bondsman is legally bound to pay the full amount of the bond to the clerk of the court. This is called a bond estreature, or bond forfeiture (at this point, the cosigner becomes liable to the bail bondsman for the amount forfeited, usually the full amount of the bond). The agent then has 10 additional months to return the defendant to custody and receive almost all of the forfeited money back, and has an additional year after that to receive 50% of it back.

But if a person puts up a cash bond with the court, the laws covering the returning of cash bonds to a depositor are vague at best. Even if the defendant is only gone for a few days, the depositor risks loosing all of the money he put up with the court. Also note that the clerk of the court is not be obligated to notify the depositor of court dates. If a bondsman handles the release from jail, however, the laws are clearly spelled out by state statute and the indemnitor is protected, only being liable for any cost of bringing the bond skip back to custody after a breach of a bond.

In addition, if the cosigner on a bail bond feels like the person they signed for (or put up tangible collateral for) has become a risk to take off, and is likely not go to court, the bail bondsman has the power to revoke that person’s bond and return them to custody. At that point, when the defendant is returned to jail, the co-signer’s liability goes away. A cash depositor has no such power to return a person to jail. And should the defendant miss court, the Florida bail agent has full arrest powers in almost every state, and can apprehend the absconder and return him to custody. The cash depositor, of course, has no such arrest powers, and as stated above, it may not make any difference once the defendant has missed his court date, as the money may be lost from day one.

If you have any more questions, call me at 352/376-6645 and I’ll be happy to answer any questions you might have about cash bonds and bail bonds.