Art. 5122.Oath of Surety and Principal On Bond

A bond is only as good as the person or property standing behind it, and Article 5122 makes sure that backing gets sworn to under oath before a court relies on it. Except as the article itself provides otherwise, no bond in a judicial proceeding is accepted without accompanying affidavits establishing the surety's financial capacity to make good on it.

Two affidavits cover the ordinary surety bond: each surety swears to being worth the bonded amount, in assets subject to execution, over and above the surety's other obligations, and the party furnishing the bond separately swears to being informed and believing the same thing about each surety. A third affidavit covers the property-bond alternative Article 5121.1 introduces: the party furnishing a bond secured by immovable property swears to being worth the bonded amount and to the property containing assets subject to execution over and above the party's other obligations.

None of this applies to a bond executed by a surety company licensed to do business in Louisiana. A licensed company's regulatory standing already gives the court the assurance these individual affidavits are meant to supply, so the article exempts that category of surety from the oath requirement entirely.