If your adult child was arrested for a DUI this is a serious charge, and this can be a difficult time for everyone involved. To help you to not panic, below are three steps you should take to help your child.
Contact an Attorney
The first thing to do is to contact an attorney that is experienced with DUI cases. The attorney will step in immediately and take over so you can ensure you are doing everything correctly. This is important, as DUI laws can be very complex and hard for the laymen to understand.
Having a DUI attorney on your adult child's side will help increase their chances of coming out of the DUI without jail time or with as little jail time as possible. This does depend on the situation, however, such as if this is the first time your child has been arrested for DUI, they have a much better chance of not getting any jail time, but if this is their second or more time, your child may be looking at jail time.
Find a Bail Bondsman
After you find a good DUI attorney, you next need to find a good bail bond service. Your adult child will have to post bail in order to be released from jail. To make things easier for them and you a bail bondsman can help you. You will have to pay the bondsman a percentage of the bail money that is owed, which is generally approximately 10%. This is much less than the entire bail amount, so it saves you a lot of money. It is important to know that a bail bondsman will keep up with your adult child and ensure they appear at all hearings. This is because if your child does not appear in court the bail bondsman will have to pay the entire bail amount to the court. The bail bondsman will then locate your child and put them back in jail.
Request a Department of Motor Vehicles Hearing
In order to get their license back your adult child will have to request a Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV) hearing. The main purpose of this type of hearing is to determine if your adult child should get their license back or be suspended. Instead of going to this hearing alone, have your child hire a DMV attorney or ask their DUI attorney to help them. Your child will have a certain amount of time to contact the DMV office, which is approximately 10 days after they have been arrested, in order to have this type of hearing. IF they do not contact the DMV office, within this amount of time, they would lose their license automatically.
Talk with your child's attorney if you have questions and they can go over this information with you in much more detail.
