New AOC Form for Relief from Monetary Obligations

The Administrative Office of the Courts has issued a new form, AOC-CR-415, through which a person can make a motion for relief from costs, fines, and other monetary obligations. The form also doubles as the order through which a judge can rule on the motion. Earlier drafts of the form have appeared on this blog over the years (here, for example). It’s a challenge to create something that is simple enough to be useful to all parties (including self-represented parties), but also comprehensive enough to incorporate the various legal wrinkles scattered across dozens of statutes. It’s also hard to create something that is useful at both the front end of the process (sentencing, generally) and later in the life of a case. The form begins with a worksheet designed to give the court a sense of a defendant’s ability to pay monetary obligations. I shared some thoughts about evaluating ability to pay in a pair of blog posts in 2018, here and here. A few items on the worksheet flow from North Carolina law. For example, when ordering restitution the court “shall take into consideration the resources of the defendant including all real and personal property owned by the defendant and the income derived from the property.” G.S. 15A-1340.36. For fines and other obligations the court should consider the defendant’s ability to pay, see G.S. 15A-1362(a) (“In determining the method of payment of a fine, the court should consider the burden that payment will impose in view of the financial resources [...]