A Deeper Understanding of Bail Bonds

Although most people have heard of bail bonds, when faced with unexpectadly having to obtain one, they may find they have little knowledge of how bail bonds work. The bail bond process overall can be very simple. You pay 10% of whatever the total bail amount is to the bail bond company. The bail bond company posts a bail bond for the full amount of the bail with the jail. The person you bailed out makes all of their court appearances and when the case is over, the bail bond company sends you a notice letting you know you are no longer financially responsible for the bail bond.

For most of the people we post bonds for, it remains a fairly simple process without any complications. When something does come up, you want to make sure you have knowledgeable bail bond professionals available to help you. The other important thing to note is bail bond companies have different ways of handling common situations that may occur. The way these situations are handled can mean the difference in whether or not you have to pay additional money or whether or not the person you bailed out gets to remain free on bond. These situations can be somewhat complicated to explain and you may never have to deal with them but it is better to at least have some knowledge about them and the different ways they are handled.

I will address these situations in separate entries. To clarify, these are things that may come up after you have paid the money to the bail bondsman and your friend or loved one is out on bail. It is important to know, the premium you pay for the bail bond is fully earned upon the release of the person you had the bond posted for. If he or she walked out of the jail and got arrested just outside the jail, you would not be entitled to a refund. This rarely happens but it can. This would apply whether the person was out on the bond for one second or one year, the premium is fully earned and you do not get a penny of it back. Most agents these days are pretty good about explaining this to people. Even so, there is still confusion about the premium. Some people call up thinking the cost for the bond is going to be 10% of the 10%. Usually they are calling on a large bond, say $100,000 or more. Or we will explain that the cost for the bail bond is going to be $10,000 (on a $100,000 bond). We will explain it a few different ways. Then they will ask, "what do we pay you?". Other people are under the assumption they just have to give us something for collateral. They call up wanting to know if we can use their car for collateral. When that is the first question people ask, I find out how much the bail is and explain how much the cost for the bail bond will be. I explain to them the two parts of a bail bond, the premium and the collateral.