Traffic Ticket Know How

By Katie Penny



Is it worth going to a court date for a traffic ticket?
Unfortunately, as with most legal questions, the answer must be a decidedly and teeth-grindingly ambiguous, “it depends.” The most important thing to do is call the district attorney’s office and find out if court appearance is mandatory for the offense for which you were ticketed—and these are not immediately obvious, so always call to find out. If it is mandatory, then, you have to go to court. If it is not mandatory, then read on.
A traffic citation proceeding is a criminal one, in which the district or city attorney proceeds against the citizen. In any criminal proceeding, the offender has 3 options: to plead guilty, not guilty, or no contest (no lo contendere—is only done rarely for traffic offenses.) Pleading “guilty” sounds very serious—and it generally is—but it is often, in small issues like speeding, not a bad choice, because of the costs and trouble inherent in pleading not guilty. By pleading guilty, you waive the right to have a criminal trial in which to defend yourself and present witnesses in your defense, you admit your guilt, and accept the penalty.
If court attendance is not mandatory, you have the option of paying the fine or attending the court date to argue against the ticket. In essence, paying your fine equals pleading guilty. Showing up to court should mean pleading not guilty. You are given a certain amount of time, usually from 30 days to several months—it will say on the ticket and vary from parish to parish—to pay your fine before your court date.
Unfortunately, many people do not understand what their options are when they are issued a ticket, and they often do show up at their court dates simply intending to pay their fine. If you pay the fine, you have pled guilty and it is over. If you show up at your court date when it is not mandatory, the DA will view that as you pleading not guilty and contesting the grounds of the ticket. If you do not intend to contest your ticket and attendance is not mandatory, there is no reason to come to court.
The best advice, when you do agree that you were actually violating a traffic law—let’s say you were speeding—is not to go to court. Call the DA’s office, find out the amount of your fine, and find out where you are to pay the fine, go to that place, and pay the fine. Always ask what form your payment may take, as many parishes or cities will not accept personal checks, but only cash or cashier’s checks.
If you know you were guilty, and the police officer who issued you the ticket clocked you speeding and will testify against you at trial, then there is no real reason to come to court. If you come to court and admit you were speeding, you will simply be directed to the bonds and fines department of the sheriff’s office to pay your fine, which you could have done already without missing a day of work to go to traffic court.
If you do believe, on the other hand, that you were not really speeding and that the state could not prove you were, then by all means attend your court date. At that date, you should be prepared to go to trial: you must present evidence disputing the DA’s evidence of your guilt, i.e., your traffic citation issued by a police officer and that officer’s testimony.
Your court date is the time to bring witnesses and evidence to prove you were not speeding—or doing whatever your ticket was for. Your court date is not the time to show up and say you want to bring witnesses some time in the future. Go ahead and bring them with you. Simply showing up at court does not mean you will be judged not guilty, however; it just means that the DA will put on evidence that you were guilty and you will put on evidence that you were innocent, and the judge will decide who is right. That is not to deter people from pleading not guilty—if they truly were not guilty.
However, it might be difficult to prove—without video of your speedometer not speeding—and if you really kind of know you were speeding, and are just mad about getting caught, just pay the fine.

Other things to remember:
• Almost all of these things depend hugely on your particular parish. My best advice is to call the DA or sheriff’s office to find out your options in your parish.
• If you forget about your ticket until the day of your court date, and your head pops off your pillow in panic, then, yes, attend your court date rather than failing to pay your fine on time. If you do not pay your fine or show up to court on a non-mandatory citation, your driver’s license might end up getting suspended. If you do not come to a mandatory court date, the judge will issue a bench warrant on you. Very unappealing.
• If you cannot afford to pay your ticket all at once, then try calling whatever department collects fines and speak to them ahead of time about possibly setting up a payment plan to pay your ticket in installments. Whoever collects fines in your parish might be willing to work with you if you are being proactive about taking care of a fine. If your parish’s fine collector will not set up payment plans, then you can still usually show up at your court date and ask for an extension of time in which to pay the fine.
• The best advice of all: drive safely and do not break traffic laws in the first place!
The provided information is fact-sensitive and jurisdiction-dependent. Consult an attorney before employing the above legal concepts.

Legal Eagle - Covenant Marriage In Louisiana

By Katie Penny
Times Columnist

The provided information is fact-sensitive and jurisdiction-dependent. Consult an attorney before employing the below legal concepts.

There are only 2 kinds of marriage that can be entered into in Louisiana: covenant marriages or non-covenant marriages. The creation of the covenant marriage in Louisiana was quite controversial, but it is not really used very often, because entering into a covenant marriage, rather than an ordinary marriage, is completely optional. Once entered into, however, the fairly stringent requirements for entering and exiting the marriage are treated as contractual, and are, and tend to frighten off even some supporters of the Covenant Marriage Act (located in Louisiana Revised Statutes 9:272-276, established in 1997).
Of course, marriage itself is pretty serious, so even a regular marriage should not be entered into lightly—one would hope. A covenant marriage can be thought of as extreme-marriage, or marriage+, as the difference lies mainly in the more onerous requirements for the marriage to be formed and/or terminated.
A regular marriage has only 3 basic requirements: 1) There must be a marriage ceremony, performed by some authorized third party, attended by both husband and wife in person. That means that “common law marriages,” which some other states recognize when the parties have lived together as man and wife for a certain amount of time, but never had a wedding ceremony, are not valid marriages in Louisiana. 2) Both parties must verbally express their mutual, freely given consent. A minor must have permission of custodians or even have court authorization. 3) There must be no legal impediment to the marriage. In Louisiana, there are 3 of these legal impediments: 1) bigamy 2) same-sex 3) blood relation to a certain degree.
Marriage is not permitted between certain blood relatives (including adoptive relatives, with the caveat of legal permission in some cases), such as direct ascendants or descendants, and siblings, cousins, or uncles/aunts. Also, if the relationship is simply through marriage, and not blood, a marriage will be permitted.
To enter into a covenant marriage, all of the above requirements still exist. However, a covenant marriage has various extra requirements. The parties must also receive at least one session of premarital counseling—and obtain an affidavit from that counselor attesting that they were so counseled—and receive and read a pamphlet on covenant marriage prepared by the attorney general. The parties must declare their intent to enter into a covenant marriage on their marriage license application. They must also execute a “declaration of intent to contract a covenant marriage.”
The declaration includes a statement by the parties that they understand that they are “a man and a woman who agree to live together as husband and wife as long as they both may live.” (La. R.S. 9:273(A)(1). They have an affirmative duty to tell each other of anything that could negatively affect the other person’s decision to enter into marriage. The affidavit from the counselor must be included with the declaration of intent, and one copy of the declaration affidavit should be retained by the parties and the other copy should be filed with the official who issues the marriage license.
At that point, a covenant marriage is just like any other marriage, with the same obligations and duties of the parties. It also creates community property between the parties just like a regular marriage.
The next big difference arises if the parties decide they don’t like each other as much as they thought they did and want to either separate or divorce. In Louisiana, there are 3 basic grounds for divorce in a non-covenant marriage: when the parties live separate and apart for either 6 months—when there are no minor children—or 12 months—when there are minor children—when a party has committed adultery, or when one of the spouses has committed a felony and been sentenced to death or imprisonment with hard labor. These basic divorce requirements are fairly minimal, and the “living separate and apart” is the result of the institution of no-fault divorce in Louisiana. In some ways, a covenant marriage is simply an optional reinstitution of a divorce system where the parties do have to show fault of the other party.
The grounds for divorce in a covenant marriage are located in Louisiana Revised Statutes 9:307. These requirements ultimately amount to the fact that simply living apart is not really enough to get a divorce when one has entered into a covenant marriage, whereas living apart long enough will be perfectly sufficient to obtain a regular divorce.
The marriage can be terminated only after the parties receive counseling—from the time the marital difficulties begin until the divorce judgment is signed—and only if the party can also show one of the following grounds: 1) the other spouse committed adultery 2) the other spouse committed a felony and has been sentenced to death or imprisonment with hard labor 3) the other spouse has abandoned the marriage for one year and constantly refuses to return 4) the other spouse has physically or sexually abused the spouse seeking the divorce or a child of one of the spouses 5) the spouses have been living separate and apart without reconciliation for at least two years 6) the spouses have been living separate and apart from one year since a judicial separation was signed—judicial separations are not used in anything but covenant marriages anymore; in a regular marriage, just living apart for one year alone would entitle a party to a divorce.
7) if there is a minor child of the marriage, and the spouses have been living separate and apart for 18 months since the signing of the judicial separation—unless the basis for the judicial separation was abuse of a spouse or child, in which case the time period for obtaining the divorce after a judicial separation remains one year even when there is a minor child. A judicial separation can be obtained for basically the same reasons as above, except that it also may be obtained for habitual “intemperance” of the other spouse, excesses, cruel treatment, or outrages, or ill treatment that renders living together insupportable.
However, and to calm somewhat the outraged opponents of covenant marriage who think covenant marriage is unfair when there is abuse, the pre-divorce counseling requirement is done away with when the other spouse has physically or sexually abused the spouse seeking the divorce or one of the children.

How To Legally Change Your Name

By Katie Penny
Times Columnist

The provided information is fact-sensitive and jurisdiction-dependent. Consult an attorney before employing the below legal concepts.

Were your parents hippies? Have you paid the price for it? Sunflower Peaceandlove Smith? Mario Savio Jones? Do you cringe when people ask you your middle name? Fortunately, although we get named when we cannot yet roll our eyes at our parents, the law provides a procedure by which one’s name may be legally changed! And the process is neither as complex nor as simple as the average person probably imagines.

The reason people often think the process is simple is probably because of maiden names—and books, in which people always seem to be able to prance to the courthouse to get their name changed on a coffee break.

Taking your spouse’s last name is completely optional in these liberated days. If you do want to take your spouse’s name, however, the marriage license acts in the same way as a signed court order authorizing a name change, and it may be presented in the same way to the various organizations with whom a name change must be registered—except the Department of Vital Statistics, because only a court order will authorize a name change on a birth certificate.

So, if you want to change your surname because you have gotten married, you need not go through the following procedure. Tip to new brides: don’t buy honeymoon airplane tickets in your new name. Your passport cannot be changed until after you get the license, and international airport security is…tetchy, these days, about the name on the plane ticket matching the name on the passport.

And also, on the other end of the marriage spectrum, tip to new divorcées: if you request in the petition for divorce that you be permitted to revert to your maiden name after the divorce is final, the judgment of divorce will act in the same way as the marriage license.

All the court order—or marriage license/ judgment of divorce—really does is give you the authority to have all of the other important organizations change your name. If the court authorizes a name change, you yourself still have to contact the DMV, the social security office, the Department of Vital Statistics, etc., and have your name actually changed with them. Having the court approve a name change is just the necessary first step.

Another important caveat is that Louisiana law does not permit someone convicted of a felony—any felony, violent or not—to petition for a name change during their imprisonment, parole, or probation. Someone who has previously been convicted of a violent felony is not permitted to petition the court for a name change at all.

Also, petitioning the court for a name change for a minor is a bit more complicated than for an adult. Because a minor is not allowed to conduct legal acts, a petition to change a minor’s name must be brought by the minor’s parents, or other legal custodian, if there are no living parents, on behalf of the minor. With some exceptions regarding child support and communication, both parents must sign the petition for the change of name.

In a name change proceeding, the person who wants the name change is the plaintiff; the defendant in a name change proceeding is, by law, the district attorney of the parish in which the petition is brought.
In the petition, the requester has to give certain information to the court: the requester’s name at birth, their birth date, their birth place, their mother’s maiden name, their father’s name, and a reason for the desired change. The reason is very important, as the judge must make a determination that the law and evidence justify the name change. The reason does not always have to be a very good reason. An example might be: “My name is Sue and I’m a man and I keep getting attacked for it.” The judge needs to know your reason nonetheless. You should also inform the court of the name you are changing to.
Because the DA is technically the defendant in the name change proceeding, he or she has to be legally served with the petition and he has to respond to it. So, the requester will write up the petition, have the DA served, and the DA will either contest the proceeding or not. If the DA finds that you are not a felon and that there is no other impediment to the change, he will probably not object. If he does, though, the court can set a hearing at which the requester and the DA can explain their reasons and/or objections.
If the judge finds that the change is justified, such as when a gentleman is named Sue, the judge will sign a judgment authorizing the name change.
At that point, your work really begins. The judgment must be presented to any organization with whom the requester’s name must be changed. The responsibility to have your name changed on your passport belongs to you; getting a new driver’s license is your job. The most difficult part of all of this is probably remembering all of the places you need to tell about your name change and then getting through their red tape.

The provided information is fact-sensitive and jurisdiction-dependent. Consult an attorney before employing the above legal concepts.