Court Fees for R and her partner

A good friend of mine in New York and her partner, who are already financially precarious due to life circumstances and disability, are facing court fees due to a chain of horrible events.   Part of why they are going to court is that her partner is trans and doesn’t feel safe.  Unfortunately for the same reason — that her partner is trans —  they can’t fundraise openly as her partner’s career would be devastated if that fact became public knowledge.  I work in the same field as her partner and I can vouch that being known to be trans would be utterly devastating to employability.   So, I am posting this fundraiser on their behalf: everything will go to them to help out with their costs.

The summary of the horrible chain of events is thus:  her partner was pulled over for running a red light (in  significant part due to inclement weather) and unfortunately had no ID at the time due to a recently lost wallet.  The police arrested and held her partner in a jail cell for hours and… just failed entirely to notify the registered owner of the vehicle, my friend.  This led to a terrifying few hours where neither my friend nor her mother could locate her partner, despite calling around to hospitals and several other police departments.  Her partner has been located since, but it further turns out that apparently the missing driver’s license was also suspended, and while they knew about the original suspension -- which was for unpaid insurance on a car they had sold -- they had also been informed it had been lifted on September 28th

So at this point they don't know if they’re going to have to pay some huge scofflaw fee, plus driving without an ID, plus running a red light, plus driving on a suspended license that they didn't know was suspended seeing as how they’d been told it wasn’t anymore.

It looks like they are going to have pro bono representation and they're hoping to reduce the fines/ticket severity but even so there’s still going to be costs -- they've already had to pay $305 to clear the suspension, which they hadn't been informed of previously.   They don’t have any savings to speak of, given other medical bills and the general cost of and precarity in “existing as a Millenial”.

While obviously running a red light, even with mitigating circumstances, is not ideal... a great deal of this mess is a communication disaster with a lot of fault on the part of the government.  Small screw-ups shouldn’t ruin your life.  If you can help my friends out, I’d really appreciate it.  Thanks, y’all.