Thursday, November 3, 2016

What does it mean to have your traffic ticket "fixed"?

Unless you're Miss Daisy and you have an ageless Morgan Freeman to drive you from place to place, statistics say you will at some point in your life be stopped and ticketed for a moving violation. Failure to yield, speeding, improper left turn, all the old favorites.

When this happens, its ridiculously annoying. I mean, that cop has to have something better to do, right?

Instead of just paying the fine and taking points on your license, in most cases it's probably better to pay a lawyer to "fix" the ticket. So what does it mean to have your ticket "fixed" by a lawyer?

First, it DOES NOT mean that your ticket is automatically dismissed once you pay the lawyer. Sure, there are times your tickets can be dismissed, but that is rare. So no, paying $100 to some massive, bulk traffic law firm will not be the end of the pain in your rear that is this traffic ticket.

What it DOES mean, however, is that your lawyer will get the prosecutor to amend your speeding ticket to a non-moving violation. Usually littering or illegal parking. By having your ticket amended, you will avoid having points added to your license by the Department of Revenue. This is important because once you accumulate too many points on your license, your car insurance rates go up and you risk losing your license.

Sounds painless, right? Wrong.

In exchange for that amended violation, you will often pay a much heftier fine plus court costs. Some people are forced to pay the court as much as $300 in fines and court costs depending on the circumstances of their traffic violation! Ridiculous. Add to that the $100 (per ticket, of course) you will pay the lawyer you hired to get the ticket amended, and now your "failure to yield" will result in your failure to eat anything but Ramen for the next month because you're broke.

How do you know if you need to hire a lawyer for your traffic tickets? Here are a few guidelines you can follow:
  1. Make sure your ticket is actually a moving violation and determine how many points on your license it could lead to. You can find a list of moving violations and their point values on the DOR website here
  2. Determine how many points are already on your license. If you're getting close to accumulating enough points to where your license will be revoked, you should probably hire a lawyer to prevent more points.
  3. Check with your insurance company to see how accumulating traffic points would affect your insurance rates.
  4. Was there an accident? Was someone injured or worse? Always get a lawyer when there is an accident resulting in property damage or bodily injury as the results on your ticket could expose you to future civil liability over the accident.
As always, every case is different so the best advice I can give you as to whether you need your ticket fixed would be to take advantage of a free consultation offered by a lawyer in your area to determine if you need to hire an attorney to fix your tickets. I happen to know a good one.


The Glaesman Law Firm, LLC is a full service criminal defense law firm located at 820 S. Main St. Suite 208, St. Charles, Missouri 63301. If you or a loved one has been charged with a crime or is facing a probation violation hearing, call them right away to discuss your options.