Carolina Criminal & DUI Lawyer BlogCleaning Up Your Record. Dealing with the Courts and DMV. What Happens If I Pay Off Old Tickets in North Carolina?
The first step is to figure out what is out there on a statewide basis. One should be careful to consider how tickets can affect one another – Bill Powers
See More: Missed Court and New Tickets, What Happens
What To Look For:
- Approach License Restoration Carefully
- Important to Consider ALL Counties / Jurisdictions
- Paying Off a Citation May Cause Additional Problems
- FIRST STEP – Obtain an Official North Carolina Driving Record
- North Carolina Department of Transportation / Division of Motor Vehicles
- Tickets Can Affect One Another
- Timing is Important
- Don’t Forget About Late Fees, Penalties & Restoration Charges
Take Our Traffic Ticket Quiz
We’re here to help. Traffic Law and Tickets can be deceptively complicated – Bill Powers
Consider This:
- We offer a Confidential Consultation, Free of Charge
- We handle traffic matters and DMV License Restoration cases
- We are willing to answer questions and see if we can help
- We will tell you if we think you can handle a traffic ticket by yourself
- We also can explain how tickets affect one-another
- Timing, When, and How Things are Handled Can Be Important
Modified Transcript of “What Happens if I Pay Off Old Tickets” for the Hearing Impaired
Cleaning Up Your Record. Dealing with the Courts and DMV. What Happens If I Pay Off Old Tickets in North Carolina?
Hi, I’m Bill Powers, and I’m going through a series of questions that people post online
on normally some kind of message board, not a client of ours or anything, but they do
post them in public forums. Let’s go through them and see if we can’t answer, in general
sense, some of the questions or ideas that people have or want to know more
information about.
First one says, “How to handle an old driving ticket ourselves,” so the person wants to
handle themselves, which is just fine. “Old ticket from the 2000s, forgot to take care of
the thing, and get license back. Called Raleigh,” which I’m assuming is DMV, saying that,
“The only thing stopped me are these old tickets. Trying to reach attorneys, and they
either seem too busy or too much money. I want to avoid getting additional points,” and
you just want to handle it and get your license back to go back and forth to work, and
not be a bother to family. I have to credit this person and say, “Hey, that’s great. I think
it’s encouraging that someone is trying to get back into the workforce.”
First and foremost, yes. You can handle citations yourself. In North Carolina there’s no law that
says you have to hire a lawyer. It could be a bit complicated, if you want to check out
our website, we have a lot of information about traffic citations, insurance points,
motor vehicle points, and things of that nature. The best thing to do when you’re trying
to get your license back is to figure out what else do you have out there. Do you have
tickets in Mecklenburg County? Do you have tickets in Iredell County? Do you have
tickets in Cabarrus County, Union County? Just one place or multiple places?
Take a big approach, take a global approach in North Carolina and try to figure out what
you’ve got, what is pending. For purposes of North Carolina, as you can see this gets complicated, you can
go online, the North Carolina Department of Transportation, Division of Motor Vehicle
has a very good website and pull a driving record. That’s a good starting point to see if there are revocations or suspensions on your record.
Be careful, they’re some copy-cats out there. You need to find
the official government website. There’s a form you can fill out. They charge a relatively
minor fee, and you can get a certified copy of your record.
I think the most important thing to realize is, you don’t just want to pay them off
without maybe speaking to the District Attorneys Office. Now, District Attorneys Office
is the one that you’d be responsible to talk to. They’re the prosecutor in the case, each
judicial district has their own District Attorneys Office, they’re elected positions.
Then, once you figure out where the cases are, what’s outstanding, you may need to
contact individual District Attorneys in those counties. Unfortunately, there’s normally
not a quick fix when a lot of time is expired. It can be difficult just finding the old cases. I
don’t know who you talk to about legal fees. Legal fees are normally set on base amount
of work that has to be done and relative training and experience of an attorney.
I do know one thing though, those consultations are always free, at least in our office
they are, and they’re always confidential. If people have questions, we encourage you
to give us a call. I will take a look at things. We’ll get an idea where we have to go. We
are available to travel a good part of North Carolina. Our licenses are good throughout
the state of North Carolina. We do have other attorneys that will travel, or we can
contact DA’s for clients, and see if we can work something out.
Great inquiry and I wish all the best of luck to whomever is dealing with one of these
things. It’s a complicated process, it could be frustrating at times, but I applaud anyone
who wants to get their license back. If you have any questions, please give us a ring.
We’re here to help, talk to you soon.