People miss court dates for human reasons: the date was months after the ticket, the mail went to an old address, life happened. What matters now is speed, because North Carolina law contains a deadline most people have never heard of.
Under N.C. Gen. Stat. § 7A-304(a)(6), the $200 failure-to-appear fee does not attach if you appear or resolve the charge within 20 days of the missed date. Call us inside that window and the miss can often be cleaned up as if it barely happened. Wait, and the machinery starts grinding.
The 20-day window applies whether your charge was an infraction or a misdemeanor — though for criminal traffic charges, a missed date usually also means an order for arrest has been issued, which is one more reason to move immediately rather than hope it’s been forgotten. And if the 20 days have already passed and the $200 fee is sitting on your case, don’t treat it as carved in stone: the court has the power to waive it, and we can often have it removed when we resolve the underlying charge.
What happens if you let it sit
When a court reports a failure to appear or a failure to pay, the DMV must revoke your license (N.C. Gen. Stat. § 20-24.1) — the revocation takes effect on the 60th day after the order. From there, problems compound in a predictable, miserable sequence: you keep driving because you have to, you get stopped again, and now you’re charged with driving while license revoked — a criminal charge — on top of the original ticket. We have seen a $200 speeding ticket grow into years of license purgatory this way. None of it is necessary.
Old tickets can be fixed — even very old ones
Whether your missed date was last month or years ago, the path is the same and it works: we locate the case, move to strike the failure to appear, resolve the underlying charge — often by the same reductions available to anyone else — and get the compliance paperwork to the DMV so your license can be restored. If you’re out of state and discovered a North Carolina hold when you tried to renew at home, we handle the whole thing without you traveling back.
What it costs
It depends on how much has accumulated — one missed date is simpler than a decade of them. We’ll look up your case for free, tell you exactly what’s outstanding, and quote a flat fee up front. In most cases, people are relieved to learn how fixable this is.
The worst day to deal with a missed court date is tomorrow. Call 252-728-1373 or tell us what happened — no judgment, just the fix.