WHAT IS A WARRANT AND HOW DOES IT WORK?
Warrants are issued by Farmers Branch Municipal Court Judge Fenton. Normally a warrant is issued for the arrest of a person who has failed to appear within the allotted time required by Farmers Branch Municipal Court for appearing and entering a plea. The “appearance date” is located on the actual citation you receive from the police officer when he/she issues a traffic citation. Once this date passes, the Judge can issue a warrant for your arrest to insure the citation is resolved. After a warrant is issued any police officer in any jurisdiction can take custody of you and place you under arrest until you can be transferred to Farmers Branch Municipal or a bond is posted on your case.
WHAT IS A BOND AND HOW DOES IT WORK?
There are two different types of bonds available to Defendants in Farmers Branch Municipal Court. First, you can post a “cash bond.” A cash bond requires the full amount of the citation be posted in cash with the court and is held in trust to secure your presence at any future court dates that may be required. This can be very expensive costing as much as $750.00 for one citation depending on the charge. Further, without representation by an experienced attorney you can easily be talked into paying this amount and having the citation go on your permanent record. The only benefit you get is being released. This benefit is short lived as The Texas Department of Public Safety will soon get knowledge of the conviction and can suspend your driver’s license for up to 1 year and charge another $780.00 in surcharges over 3 years for certain convictions.
The second type of bond is referred to as a “surety bond.” This is the bond that a Farmers Branch attorney posts for you. The fee varies depending on whether or not you are actually in jail when the bond is posted. Normally you will see the fees range from $90.00 to $150.00 per offense in warrant. This is considerably cheaper than the cash bond option and also includes representation in court. The only time it won’t is if you are suckered into hiring a bail bond company to lift your warrants. They will charge you this fee only to turn around and tell you that hiring an attorney is your problem. Or the attorney they hire to get you out of jail will tell you that they “have only been hired to bond you out of jail and not for representation in court.” Be careful of this scam as it has cost many of our clients a lot of money.
WHAT IS YOUR BEST OPTION?
The lawyers at the Beltz Law Firm want the same thing you want. We want your Farmers Branch traffic tickets and or other criminal matters resolved without you spending any time in jail. We want to protect your criminal record as well as your driving record in the process. We want to do all of this at a reasonable price so that you can get back to your life.
If you have outstanding warrants in Farmers Branch do not wait until you get arrested. At that point you are scrambling for anyone to help and you can be taken advantage of by any number of bail bonds companies and/or lawyers. That will only cost you more money. Call our Farmers Branch attorneys today to discuss what can be done before it gets that far. At the very least, give us a call to discuss your particular case to see if we may be the right lawyers for you. However, if you do wait too long and end up getting arrested we can be trusted to provide financially reasonable bond rates that include lawyer representation in court once you are released.