{"id":3355,"date":"2013-04-19T17:44:47","date_gmt":"2013-04-19T17:44:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.markagallagher.com\/socaldefenselawyers\/failure-to-pay-happens-next-2\/"},"modified":"2020-10-30T20:48:02","modified_gmt":"2020-10-30T20:48:02","slug":"failure-to-pay-happens-next-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.markagallagher.com\/socaldefenselawyers\/failure-to-pay-happens-next-2\/","title":{"rendered":"Failure to Pay – What happens next?"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Failure<\/a>We\u2019ve all heard this scenario: You plead guilty<\/strong> on a traffic ticket<\/strong> and the judge orders you to pay all sort of fines.\u00a0 Fines for the ticket, fines for court, fines to process the fines, fines if you had oatmeal for breakfast, and fines if you didn\u2019t eat breakfast.\u00a0 Face it, if you have a ticket, the court is gonna make you pay.<\/p>\n

After you plead you go to collections to get put on a payment plan.\u00a0 Now, nobody ever has the intention to stop paying, but sometimes life catches up with us and we stop making payments.\u00a0 A few months later you realize that there is a hold on your license from the failure to pay<\/strong>! On your record it will usually show a \u201cfailure to pay\u201d or it will say \u201cmatters set for compliance.\u201d\u00a0 So what can you do?<\/p>\n

The bad news is, not much.\u00a0 You can look up your DMV record to make sure the hold really does exist with the DMV.\u00a0 If it does, then you gotta pay.\u00a0 If the hold is more than five years old, you might be able to purge the charge with a call to the DMV, but otherwise, be prepared to pay up.<\/p>\n

Did you know that a failure to pay could also be treated as a misdemeanor on your record?\u00a0 While courts don\u2019t normally do this, they can, and Orange County is famous for filing these charges.\u00a0 The reason the court can file the misdemeanor charge for a failure to pay is found in section 40508(b) of the California Vehicle Code.\u00a0 Here is what the section says:<\/p>\n

(b) A person willfully failing to pay bail in installments as agreed to under Section 40510.5 or a lawfully imposed fine for a violation of a provision of this code or a local ordinance adopted pursuant to this code within the time authorized by the court and without lawful excuse having been presented to the court on or before the date the bail or fine is due is guilty of a misdemeanor regardless of the full payment of the bail or fine after that time.\u00a0 http:\/\/www.dmv.ca.gov\/pubs\/vctop\/d17\/vc40508.htm<\/a>
\n<\/em><\/p>\n

What this means, is that you could actually go to jail for failing to pay your fine! Crazy, huh?\u00a0 The reality of the situation is that the courts file this simply to get you back into court and pay your fine.\u00a0 Most of the time, you go back in and they will dismiss the misdemeanor failure to pay, or at least reduce it to an infraction and get you back on track to make payments.\u00a0 However, they don\u2019t have to dismiss or reduce the charge. \u00a0It depends on the judge.\u00a0 If the court is unwilling to reduce or dismiss that failure to pay, since it is a misdemeanor, you are entitled to a jury trial.\u00a0 Take the jury trial! You don\u2019t want a silly misdemeanor like this on your record!<\/p>\n

Of course, if you find yourself in this situation, you should probably talk to an attorney and be prepared to hire one.\u00a0 We handle cases like this all the time.\u00a0 Give us a call!\u00a0 We will be happy to answer any questions you might have.\u00a0 Email me at jonmichael.bradley@gmail.com<\/a> or call us at 800-797-8406<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

We\u2019ve all heard this scenario: You plead guilty on a traffic ticket and the judge orders you to pay all sort of fines.\u00a0 Fines for the ticket, fines for court, fines to process the fines, fines if you had oatmeal for breakfast, and fines if you didn\u2019t eat breakfast.\u00a0 Face it, if you have a…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_kad_post_transparent":"","_kad_post_title":"","_kad_post_layout":"","_kad_post_sidebar_id":"","_kad_post_content_style":"","_kad_post_vertical_padding":"","_kad_post_feature":"","_kad_post_feature_position":"","_kad_post_header":false,"_kad_post_footer":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[19,20],"tags":[451,495,86,321],"class_list":["post-3355","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-california-criminal-law-blog","category-california-traffic-ticket-blog","tag-california-traffic-tickets","tag-failure-to-pay","tag-misdemeanor","tag-traffic-warrants"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.markagallagher.com\/socaldefenselawyers\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3355","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.markagallagher.com\/socaldefenselawyers\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.markagallagher.com\/socaldefenselawyers\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.markagallagher.com\/socaldefenselawyers\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.markagallagher.com\/socaldefenselawyers\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3355"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.markagallagher.com\/socaldefenselawyers\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3355\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5427,"href":"https:\/\/www.markagallagher.com\/socaldefenselawyers\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3355\/revisions\/5427"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.markagallagher.com\/socaldefenselawyers\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3355"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.markagallagher.com\/socaldefenselawyers\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3355"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.markagallagher.com\/socaldefenselawyers\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3355"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}