Bartswife91
New Member
We had an old car and it needed a lot of things fixed to pass the safety inspection, money I was trying to save. I was using one of those "discount" insurance companies and had mailed my payment in, apparently if they didn't receive the payment on the due date they cancelled your policy on midnight that day even though they received the payment the following day. We were pulled over because our safety sticker was invalid and I told the officer that the repairs were more then I could afford and I was doing all I could to save to remedy the situation. He ran my husbands drivers licence and came back and told him his insurance was not valid. I told him I sent the payment but I am sure everyone else does too. From all this my husband had to pay a 760.00 ticket which we did and we were glad to be past this. Later we received a letter from the Texas Dept. of Safety that said my husbands licence was suspended because he hadn't paid the Texas surcharge which is another fee added to tickets that have to do with insurance issues. We were not notified of a surcharge by the judge or the court when we paid the ticket and had no idea that there was such a thing as a Texas surcharge, a second punishment for the one issue. We bought a new car here in Texas and not being from here it didn't have a front plate and we didn't know it required one so we were pulled over for that. Again the officer ran my husbands licence and told him he was driving on a suspended licence. I realized I had forgotten to send in the 13.00 payment and it was a week late, an oversight because we had traveled to California for our sons graduation and I really didn't mean to forget. We went straight home and I called the Tx. surcharge office and made a 40.00 payment the day the officer made me aware and we took our car to the dealer and had the licence plate mounted because all the mounting kits we ordered were not right. We took all this information to the justice of the peace, the Judge in Hearne to show her our mistake was not intentional and we had fixed the problems immediately. The judge said she would reduce the ticket from 500.00 to 100.00 to cover paperwork and she told my husband that would handle the issue. This was 7/5/14 on 7/30/14 we received a letter that my husbands licence was suspended from 7/6/14 until 8/7/14 and would not be reinstated until he filed an SR-22 and payed the Texas Department of Public Safety 100.00 reinstatement fee and a 105.00 TX.GOV fee. We asked what we payed the justice of the peace for? No one knows they tell us its a different department. Now he has two 260.00 surcharge fees that he has to pay for three years. I cannot seem to get any help from anyone because honestly this is over a 13.00 oversight I dont know where to start to right this situation, we cannot afford this with my husband and I in college along with our two sons. HELP