The updated 11th edition of MSBA’s Maryland Divorce and Separation Law (2023) is now on our shelf (catalog record). You can also access the updated text on Lexis in the Law Library. As of today, Westlaw has not yet updated its content from the 10th to 11th editions.
Among the book’s updates is a new section on parenting plans in response to the laws passed in 2020 requiring these plans in custody and/or visitation cases.
While the bulk of the legislation passed by the General Assembly in 2022 went into effect last October, there are a few new laws whose effective date is this Sunday, including the following:
“Vintage snowflakes” by thethreesisters is licensed under CC BY 2.0 
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The Anne Arundel County Public Law Library and the Circuit Court for Anne Arundel County will be closed on the court holidays of Friday, December 23rd, Monday, December 26th, and Monday, January 2nd.
New and updated titles from the National Consumer Law Center (NCLC), the Maryland State Bar Association (MSBA) and the National Business Institute (NBI) are now on our shelves covering used car fraud, custody and child support, real property, civil practice, and criminal procedure. See below:
See all NCLC titles in our catalog.
See all NBI titles in our catalog.
The Library now has new titles from the Maryland State Bar Association (MSBA), the National Business Institute (NBI), and the National Consumer Law Center (NCLC).
The 2022 seventh edition of Pleading Causes of Action in Maryland from MSBA provides example complaints with updated commentary to help the reader plead their case:
Pleading causes of action in Maryland. Authors: Paul Mark Sandler, James K. Archibald, & Eleanor T. Chung. KFM1735 .S26 2022 RES
NBI hosts seminars on an array of legal topics for every state jurisdiction. The Library receives the bound Maryland materials that include lectures, presentation slides, and sample forms.
Mini law school for Maryland HR professionals. Authors: Mitchell Batt, Alexander P. Berg, Douglas W. Desmarais, Andrea E. Murphy. KFM1534 .M56 2022
Maryland estate administration from start to finish. Authors: Liz Johnson, Roger J. McClure, Krista N. Robertson, Adam M. Spence. KFM1347 .J6 2022
Auto insurance, UM/UIM, bad faith, and liens in Maryland Authors: Charles W. Kramer, Dennis F. O’Brien, Dustin T. Woehl, Steven B. Vinick. KFM1739 .K7 2022
Maryland auto injury cases : from accident to trial. Authors: Dennis F. O’Brien, Steven B. Vinick. KFM1739 .I5 2022
The books in NCLC’s digital collection, available online and in print, are excellent, reader-friendly sources for comprehensive information on consumer debt, credit, mortgages, fraud, litigation, and other topics.
Fair credit reporting. Authors: Chi Chi Wu, Ariel Nelson ; contributing authors, Elizabeth De Armond [and 6 others]. SELF HELP NCLC KF1040 .R63 2022
Credit discrimination. Author: Battle, Jeremiah, Jr. SELF HELP NCLC KF697.D5 C74 2022
Emergency relief is a temporary order of protection from imminent, substantial harm or harassment for you or a minor child. To receive emergency relief, you must be able to show that you or a minor child are truly at risk of imminent, substantial harm or harassment.
Because an emergency relief order is temporary, the court requires you to file for permanent relief, such as for divorce, custody, or custody modification. This additional petition needs to be filed at the same time or earlier than the motion for relief.
The Emergency Custody Packet includes:
To receive emergency relief from the Anne Arundel County Circuit Court, do the following:
The time length of the relief order depends on your situation.
There are attorneys at the the Anne Arundel County Circuit Court Family Court Help Center who can help with this and other family law matters.
We now have a resource page on adoption listed on our FAQs page, where you can find relevant laws, online articles, and library materials on adoption law in Maryland.
Our FAQs page now links to our new resources page on trusts. There, you will find a bibliography of manuals and treatises on the topic, as well as links to relevant statutes, forms, and articles.
Frequently, patrons ask us if we have official court forms to file for their specific situations. The courts have their own official forms (People’s Law Library lists some of the most frequently used), but more often, people ask for official forms that do not exist.
Fortunately, the library has a wide variety of sample procedure and legal forms that are free to be copied and modified. Procedure forms are for court filings, while those commonly called “legal forms,” most of which are not standardized, are used for all other legal affairs, such as wills, leases, and contracts.
Non-standardized procedure forms can include very general templates, such as blank petitions and blank motions; they can also be more specific (but still general enough to copy), such as motions for summary judgments and counterclaims for bringing in a new party.
Form books and form sets are good sources for all kinds of sample forms and templates. Some are available online through Westlaw or Lexis, others are exclusively in print, available here inside the library. When there is no sample form specific enough to cover a situation, they can be modified.
In addition to forms from Westlaw and Lexis, the Library has a variety of form books in print and has made available additional sample procedure forms for Maryland courts. Below, I have listed them by jurisdiction and subject area, and have also included the Library’s recommended form sets from Lexis and Westlaw.
Westlaw’s Form Finder is a convenient way to search for samples. To get there from the main screen, click on “Forms” in the “All Content” tab (Figure 1).
Once you are on the “Form Finder” screen, you can choose to search for forms by state, by topic (Figure 2), or by publication name.
Once in the search screen, fill in the search fields and press enter.
Some forms, like those in American Jurisprudence Pleading & Practice Forms Annotated, link to captions (Figure 3). A caption is a header in which you would fill in information about the court, the plaintiff, and the defendant if applicable (Figure 4).
From Lexis’s main screen, click “Sample Forms” under the “Content” tab (Figure 5), which will send you to the Sample Forms page. There, you can choose to search by state or practice area (Figure 6). On the next screen, you can search all forms under the heading you chose or add the second state or practice area filter to make your search more precise. More precise is not always better, however, because you could filter out relevant results.
Unfortunately, there is no federal option listed with all the state options on the sample forms page.
To search for sample forms for federal courts, on the home screen click on “Federal” under “Explore Content,” then click on “All Federal” in the second section (Figure 7) (Be careful not to click “All Federal Cases”).
On the “All Federal” page, you can then scroll down to “Forms” and click “All Federal Forms” (Figure 8)
There you can choose to search all the federal form books or search an individual title (Figure 9).
Tax filings are due in less than a month, and like many, you have probably been putting them off. Fortunately, there are online tools and helpful information available through our library for those who just need the tools and forms to get them done, learn more specific aspects about tax filing, or become more proficient in tax law.
General Tax Filing Information and Tools
Assistance
Appeals
Library Resources
AACPLL Blog: Law Library News 