11 May What Happens if My Loved One Misses Court?
If you are serious about helping your loved one bail out of jail and keeping them bailed out, do not even think about making your premium payments late. Your bail bond payments are what let your loved one live at home instead of in jail, indulge in delicious home cooked meals, go back to work, and spend very important quality time with family and friends.
Keeping up with bail bond payments is one part of your job. The other part is to ensure your loved one shows up for their scheduled court dates. This could be you calling them multiple times in the week leading up to the court date to remind them, or it could be you driving them to court. Whether or not you can trust their word, it never hurts to send a friendly reminder.
If you fail to ensure your loved one shows up for court, or they are late, then the judge will forfeit the bond and the bail bond company will be notified. The judge will then issue a bench warrant for their arrest. Do not even risk running late, plan ahead of time and head to court extra early.
At this point, the bail bond company can back you and your loved one up and request that the judge cancels the bench warrant and reinstate the bail. Then they would reschedule a new court date. This outcome will let the defendant stay free and out on bail. This second chance means they must show up for the new court date on time.
However, there is no guarantee that the bail bond company would be accommodating. Instead of reinstating the bail, they can have their team go out, find your loved one, and bring them back into custody, where they will remain.