Lately, I have been receiving many calls asking if we are able to post cash bonds in certain states. The answer is always the same, "No, we cannot". As a surety agent, we post what is called a "surety bond" these bonds are issued directly to the jail or court where the client is being held. The surety bond is posted for the full amount of the bail, which saves the client and family usually up to 90% of the full amount. With a cash bond, the defendant or one of his family members pays the entire bond in cash to the court or jail. When the defendant shows up for court, he gets a portion of the full amount of the cash bond back, less any fees charged by the court. This is depending on the specific court and what their policies are. As we know, there have been many discussions to stop allowing cash bonds, which is essentially, trying to disallow bond agents to help clients with their bond. This never really made much sense to me, since we do not usually post "cash" to a court. The idea that making a client pay the full amount instead of having a bonding agent there to help with the cost, seems to be more stressful to our families than not. For example; if your cash bond is $10,000, then you need to bring that full amount to the jail or court instead of having a bonding company help you by allowing the 10% to be posted and the agency putting up the full amount. I hope that this is helpful information and will allow some of the confusion to be addressed. Our agency has been here for over 20 years helping our families out of stressful situations and I am hopeful we will be around much longer to continue to be of service. I know that we are in a serious time of turmoil and am hopeful we can continue to be around for our families that have become very important to us.
