Legal Financial Obligations Table

In my last post I wrote about some of the statutory options for providing relief from various criminal legal financial obligations. Several of my “friends” gave me a hard time about the post, saying the subject must be pretty complicated if I wasn’t able to compile it into some sort of table. Challenge accepted. The table is available here. What you’ll see if you care to take a look is a list of all the major legal financial obligations (LFO) that get imposed in North Carolina, organized by type. Those types are costs, non-cost fees, attorney fees, fines, and restitution, and there are even some subcategories within those types. And what I hope you’ll learn if you look at the columns to the right (and—bless your heart—the endnotes) is that the law on when a court can reduce or eliminate an LFO varies considerably by type. Only costs are “waived,” but costs, fines, and restitution can be “remitted.” Non-cost fees aren’t waived, they are “exempted.” And upon a defendant’s good-faith default, the court can “reduce” or “revoke” a cost or fine under yet another statutory provision. The back of the chart includes a glossary of sorts, explaining the statutory foundation for each avenue of relief. Another thing I hope you’ll see as you take in the big picture is that the relatively recently enacted requirements for written “just cause” findings and notice and hearing for parties directly affected by a waiver or remission only apply to certain actions on certain types [...]