In Texas, can you go to jail for not paying fines you cannot afford to pay? Here’s the law

Dalia Faheid
·2 min read
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Unpaid fines, tickets and court costs — even those from traffic violations and lowest level misdemeanors — can lead to your arrest.

But you’re not required to sit out or lay out fines in jail if you’re arrested, per Texas RioGrande Legal Aid and Texas Appleseed. A person cannot be jailed for failing to pay fines that they are unable to pay, the law states.

What Texas law has to say about your ability to pay a fine

Here’s what the Texas penal code on execution of judgment states:

TITLE 1, Art. 43.03

A court may not order a defendant confined under Subsection (a) of this article unless the court at a hearing makes a written determination that:

  • (1) the defendant is not indigent and has failed to make a good faith effort to discharge the fines and costs; or

  • (2) the defendant is indigent and:

  • (A) has failed to make a good faith effort to discharge the fines and costs under Article 43.09(f); and

  • (B) could have discharged the fines and costs under Article 43.09 without experiencing any undue hardship.

What happens when you really cannot afford to pay the fine?

Instead, the court has to offer you alternatives to jail time if you do not have enough money to pay your fines immediately, such as an extension of time to pay, a payment plan, community service, a reduction or waiver of the fines.

If you have enough money to pay the fines but refuse to pay, however, the judge can order you to serve a jail sentence for credit of at least $100 a day.

At your court date, you can ask the judge to waive the fines, as the law allows the judge to waive all or part of your fines if you are unable to pay them. Or, if you can pay some but not all of a fine, you can ask for a payment plan and tell the judge how much you can pay each month.

Here’s what Texas law says if the defendant truly cannot afford to pay:

  • Defendant can be “put to work in the county jail industries program, in the workhouse, or on the county farm, or public improvements and maintenance projects of the county or a political subdivision located in whole or in part in the county.”

  • To satisfy the full amount of the fine, the judge can order “the defendant shall be confined in jail for a sufficient length of time to discharge the full amount of fine and costs adjudged against the defendant; rating such confinement at $100 for each day and rating such labor at $100 for each day.”

  • At any time in the process, the defendant may pay the fine.