§ 6-1440.Surety requirements on bonds.

A bond is only as good as the person standing behind it. When a fiduciary — a guardian, conservator, or personal representative — offers a personal bond instead of one from a corporate surety, § 6-1440 requires proof that the individual surety can cover the bond if something goes wrong. That proof is a “justification of surety”: a description of the surety’s property, as exact as possible, who else owns a share of it, its value above any mortgages, liens, or exemptions, and whether it is a homestead.

The rule also carries a leftover formality from an older era of surety law: if the surety is a married woman, the bond must include a “married woman” clause. That language traces to a time when a married woman’s property rights were treated differently from a man’s, and the clause confirmed she could pledge her own property despite those older legal disabilities.

Beyond fiduciary bonds specifically, § 6-1440 gives the court a broader tool: whenever any individual — not just a fiduciary — is offered as surety on any bond in county court, the judge may require that person to justify their financial standing, under the same statutory justification requirement found in Neb. Rev. Stat. § 25-2223. That discretion lets a court that doubts whether a proposed surety could pay decline to accept the bond until the surety proves solvency.