Many people spend the New Year’s holiday re-evaluating their lives. Questioning their life choices, diet, exercise routine, (marriages?) and everything else under the sun. They establish lofty goals that last a week and then sadly fizzle. According to DiscoverHappyHabits.com, after 1 week, 75% of people are still keeping up with their resolution — that means in only 7 days, ¼ of all people have failed. After two weeks, alas, 71%. After 1 month, 64%, and after 6 months, lowly 46% of people are still sticking with their resolutions. Yikes, as least we don’t feel alone here in our failure!
Furthermore, statista.com breaks down New Year’s Resolutions into their top 8 categories: (1) 52% want to exercise more, (2) 50% eat better, (3) 40% want to lose weight, (4) 39% want to save money, (5) 37% want to spend more time with family, (6) 20% spend less time on social media [sadly this isn’t 100% of the resolutions], (7) 19% reduce job stress, and finally, (8) 19% reduce spending. What, no world peace? Curing world hunger? Giving up smoking/drinking? It appears not.
That’s a lot of resolutions, and sadly, not a lot of success stories after half a year. But it makes sense when you think about it, because we are all busy, we are all stressed, we are all pushed to our limits, and time is never plentiful. Our resolutions are resolute at first, and with time and life, they shift to the background. No shame in that. Life happens.
So why the blog from a law firm on New Year’s resolutions? We assure you it wasn’t to dissuade you from trying to better yourself and then shaming you with statistics that you probably will not succeed, in the alternative, we encourage you to think outside the box — we recommend a New Year’s resolution that will actually change your life! One you can’t fail. One that doesn’t require you to do daily. One that doesn’t require you to drink nothing but water and eat kale, nor does it require you to give up all fun and live on a shoestring budget.
Not only will this resolution be guaranteed to figuratively and literally change your life, it’s as easy as a phone call to a law firm to achieve. What resolution are we talking about? The gift of expungement. Yeah, yeah, it doesn’t sound too exciting, but boy is it a life changer, and you don’t have to worry about sticking with it or failing a few months into it. You won’t be one of those statistics above. You’ll be in the minority of people that actually chose a resolution that sticks.
Ok, all kidding aside, what is an expungement? It is a legal mechanism to essentially erase your criminal history. Yep, truly erase your criminal history — a true erasing of your criminal history from all public records. While there are some private companies that batch download from the public domains and can exist on the internet in perpetuity, if anyone runs a criminal background check on you using local, government-based websites your history will be erased. That goes for all Level 6 (or D felonies) and all misdemeanors. Major felonies (Level 5 or C Felonies up to Level 1 or A felonies) can be expunged in some circumstances but may be viewable even if expunged.
Regardless of the level, if an expungement is granted, many civil rights are restored, including in a lot circumstances the right to vote and to own a firearm (federal preclusions still apply in some circumstances). However, most importantly, if your criminal history is expunged by a court, it is illegal for it to be used against you by a future employer, and you are allowed to legally lie about your criminal history. How cool is that? That means once your expungement is granted you can legally say you have no criminal history (minus some government agencies and licensing issues), even if you had a list as long as your historically failed New Year’s resolutions over the course of your life.
In the end, why waste time on a diet, fad, or goals you won’t keep, when you literally can give yourself a gift that keeps on giving – a true, unencumbered you – free from criminal history, embarrassment, and shame. The New Year’s Resolution that you can actually keep and achieve is a just a call away. Treat yourself to a new you! You deserve it. If you are 5 years removed from your last misdemeanor or 8 years removed from your last felony, give us a call today and we can walk you through the life-changing experience of expungement today! Call us at 317.870.0019 or email at info@banksbrower.com.
For a more detailed look at the legal requirements of an expungement, you can read our blogs here:
https://banksbrower.com/category/expungement/