What is a Surety Bond In Court?

A surety bond in court is most cases will be for probate court.

They tend to break down like this:

• Administering a will or an estate
• Caring for a dependent

A surety bond is used to hold the this person accountable to court orders and all legal documents including wills.

For court based surety bonds, the judge overseeing the case will explicitly tell you that you need to be bonded. They will also tell you the amount you must get for your bond.

Wills and Estates

An executor of a will if a person who is named by the will to oversee the terms of the will and how the assets are broken up.

An administrator of a will is named by the court to oversee the estate and break up the assets in a fair way. They usually do this according to state rules.

This type of surety bond is called an executor bond or administrator bond.

The bond will hold this person accountable to following the will or state rules and not purposefully:

• Stealing from assets
• Favoring one part of another
• Charging inflated fees
• Selling assets at below market values

Caring for a Dependent

This will be either a conservatorship or guardianship scenario. These are both the same thing, except conservatorship is used for caring for an adult and a guardianship is caring for a minor.

As you would guess the surety bond in this scenario would be a conservatorship bond and guardianship bond.

A very common type of conservatorship bond is the Veterans Affairs bond.

The bond will protect the cared for adult or minor from a person who:

• Steals from their financial assets
• Mismanages financial assets or accounts
• Wastes money on wrongful purchases

Other Types of Court Bonds

There are other types of court bonds that are not nearly as common:

• Trustee bonds
• Appeal bonds
• Release of lien bonds

These bonds often require collateral which make them very difficult to obtain.

But in most cases when you need a court surety bond, you will need an executor or administrator bond or a guardianship or conservatorship bond.