How To Use Your Own Home As Collateral To Pay Someone's Bail
When someone has been arrested, they can go to jail and wait for weeks or months for their trial date. If this person has obligations to take care of, such as a family or job, they can't take care of them while they are in jail. If you need to help out a jailed friend or relative by hiring a bail bonds company to post bail for them, there are several different ways you can finance the bond for their bail. Here are instructions to help you use your home or property as collateral for a bail bond.
Real Estate as Bond Collateral
To post bail to get an individual out of jail until they are to appear in court, you can use your own home or land as collateral for the bail. But if the individual you bailed out of jail does not show up for court on their assigned court appearance date, the court will keep your property and foreclose on it or sell it to get back the amount of the bail. For this reason, it is important you only use your property as collateral on a bail bond if you trust the jailed individual won't skip out on their court date.
File a Deed of Trust
To use your property to pay for a bond, you first need to file a deed of trust at your local county property records office at the courthouse. By filing the deed of trust, you are making the bail bond company the beneficiary of your real estate. This deed of trust gives the bail bond company a lien on your property, which creates the collateral and backup funds on the bail if the person you bailed out of jail skips their court hearing.
Take the original copy of the filed deed of trust to the bail bond company, as they will need it before bail is made. Then the bail bond agent will go to the court to post the bond for bail and the individual you are bailing out of jail will be released from jail.
Removing the Lien From Your Property
The lien against your property stays on until the court hearing and the case is completed. At that point, the attorney representing the individual you bailed out will request a bond exoneration order with the court. You will need this so you can remove the lien from your property.
Now, make a certified copy of the exonerated bond with a written request to release the lien and deliver it to the bail bond company. The bail bond agent will calculate any interest that has accrued on the bond over the time it took for court case to be completed, and you will need to pay it. Most bail bond companies will charge a nonrefundable fee on the bond, which can vary, depending on the state you are in. Many states allow a bail bond company to charge a fee 10 to 15 percent of the bail amount. This fee is how bail bond companies earn their living.
After the bail bond company has collected their paperwork and payment from you, they will release their lien from your property. The agent will provide you with a reconveyance document. Once you have the reconveyance, you can take the document to the court's property records office to request the lien to be removed from your property.
States Not Allowing Bond Agents
There are several states that do not allow bail bond companies to operate as they consider them to be financially discriminatory. These states include Wisconsin, Oregon, Illinois, Kentucky, District of Columbia, and Massachusetts. If you need to post bail for an individual in any of these states, the court will allow you to pay the bond directly to them, which is usually approximately 10 to 15 percent of the bail. You may also use your own real estate as collateral to pay the bail in a similar process described in this article.