Bail Bond Agents: Who Pays The Agent?
Posted on: 18 August 2017
If you need a bail bond agent, and essentially understand how a bail bond works, the final question you may have is, "Who pays the agent?" Clearly, the agent gets to keep a lot of money and property when someone jumps bail, but what does the agent get out of cases where the offender shows up and the property or cash used to secure the bond goes back to the owner? The following should answer your questions.
The Bond Agent Makes a Salary
The salary of a bond agent is ten to twenty percent of your bail amount. The agent posts your bond, and either charges this fee on top of your bail amount, or deducts it from any cash money received to secure your jail bond. The seasoned bond agent that works for him/herself and can post a million dollars in bail every year clears one to two hundred thousand dollars! That is in addition to property and cash the agent gets to keep when a jumper takes off and does not appear on the specified court date.
The Junior Bond Agent
This is a bond agent that is newly licensed and working for a bond business under the owner. They usually only make an eighth to a fourth of what the owner makes, but for a single person, it is a reasonable salary. Greenhorn bond agents like these may double their salaries if they work as bounty hunters as well, but it is very physical and extremely dangerous work.
So, Who Pays Who?
If you are the one posting bail and you do so through an agent, you pay the agent. If the offender has the funds to post his/her own bail, he/she pays the agent's fees. The courts never pay bail fees or the agents, even though the courts may direct you to a bond agent.
If you use a seasoned bond agent who has others working for him/her, you pay the company. The company/owner pays any junior agent working the case. It is up to the person posting the money to the agent or company to try to get the agent's fees back from the offender via a small claims lawsuit. If the offender ends up in jail, you will not get that money back. If the offender pays his/her own bail and bail agent fees, he/she will not get the fees back because he/she paid them him/herself.
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