Maryland Statutory Form Attorney: Fill & Download for Free

When the war started in 1861, with the exception of a few months in 1848 and 1849, the United States Army had been under the command of a Virginian for 20 years, and Winfield Scott retained the post of Commanding General of the United States Army until November of 1861. Scott was born at Laurel Branch, a plantation near Petersburg, in Dimwiddie County, Virginia, in 1786, the son of a planter, Revolutionary War veteran, and officer in the Dimwiddie County militia, and his wife. Scott’s paternal grandfather was a Jacobite, and emigrated to the US from Scotland after Bonnie Prince Charlie’s defeat at the Battle of Culloden. Scott’s first name was taken from his maternal grandmother’s maiden name. The family was fairly wealthy, and thus Scott was able to attend the College of William and Mary in 1805, although he left soon after and began studying law under a local attorney, and was admitted to the bar the following year. It’s likely that the Scotts owned slaves.Scott joined the US Army in 1808 as a Captain of Artillery when Congress authorized an expansion requested by Jefferson in anticipation of conflict with Great Britain after the latter announced an escalation of their naval blockade of France, threatening American shipping. He was promoted to Major General on July 5, 1841, under John Tyler, and held that rank until his retirement on November 1, 1861, de facto holding the post of General of the Army (there being no such statutory position, nor even Chief of Staff; whoever happened to be the most senior general tended to be appointed by the President to run the Army for him) for nearly the entirety of that time. When the war broke out, Lincoln sent an envoy to ask whether Scott would remain loyal. Scott replied "I shall consider myself responsible for [Lincoln's] safety. If necessary, I shall plant cannon at both ends of Pennsylvania Avenue, and if any of the Maryland or Virginia gentlemen who have become so threatening and troublesome show their heads or even venture to raise a finger, I shall blow them to hell."

If the state’s law relating to powers of attorney requires notarization, this will not work. Contracts may (and often do) have provisions that allows for this sort of service to be used, or for “execution in counterparts” (meaning one party signs one copy of the contract, another signs another, and the signed copies are afterward exchanged). However, when statutory requirements are involved, such flexibility is removed.State law varies on the formality of execution of this type of document. Some may require the agent or attorney-in-fact (the person to whom the power of attorney is given) to counter-sign the document for it to be valid (Pennsylvania does require this, but the counter-signature does not seem to need to be notarized¹).The document must comport with Maryland law if you are a Maryland resident making it in Maryland.² While my inspection of the Maryland Estates and Trusts Code³ appears to suggest that only the maker’s signature needs to be notarized and is silent as to countersigning, witnesses are required. With regard to delivering the document to the agents, you’d want to consult a Maryland lawyer who could give you a much better opinion on whether it’s in fact necessary for your attorneys-in-fact to sign anything or whether they need to sign before the notary.If they do, you don’t have to have everyone actually come to Maryland, but you will have to physically transport the document to them, have them sign it (before local notaries, if need be; in the case of the resident of Germany, either having it done at the U.S. consulate or furnishing a thing called an apostille from the German government showing that the German equivalent of notarization was done in due course by a qualified person), and return it to you or the primary agent. Notarization under the law of the place where the document is signed is normally sufficient. Generally notarization is subject to a form of comity.I shouldn’t think that “digital signatures” are even substantially similar to notarization, and thus not equivalent. I wouldn’t attempt to argue the validity of a power signed in this manner here in Pennsylvania. Again, though, your local lawyer could give you an opinion you’re entitled to rely on and it might be different from my “general observations.”Notes:¹ 20 Pa.C.S. § 5601(b).² Per question details. Obviously, to make this answer more general, substitute “law of your place” for “law of Maryland.”³ Md. Est. & Trusts Code §§ 17-110(a)(3), 17-202.

This will vary by state law. I went to law school in Indiana, and this was a matter of some debate when I was a student. In Indiana, everyone is a mandatory reporter; state law (IC 33-31-5-1) requires anyone whosoever who has "reason to believe" that a child is, or has been, neglected or abused to report the neglect or abuse to the local child welfare agency. This appears to create a conflict with the attorney-client privilege with respect to an attorney whose client tells them that they have, in the past, abused a child. (The law making everyone a mandatory reporter was adopted the year before I entered law school, which is why it was being debated at that time.)At the time I left law school and moved to Illinois (2000), this debate was still unsettled (the issue had not yet reached the point of the Indiana Supreme Court issuing an authoritative ruling on the matter). However, I recall several salient points of the discussion:The mere fact that one's client has confessed to past abuse does not necessarily create "reason to believe" that a child has been the victim of neglect or abuse; the attorney does not know that the client's statements are true or well-founded. At most, the attorney has a suspicion that abuse or neglect may have occurred. Note that not everyone agrees with this argument; the statute says "reason to believe" and some of the learned opinions I read during this time (e.g. some of my law professors) were of the opinion that an abuser's confession, if otherwise credible, would create a "reason to believe".The attorney-client privilege does not extend to the attorney's knowledge of a client's intention to commit a crime or fraud that would cause loss of life, serious bodily injury, or "substantial injury to the financial interests or property of another". However, the attorney is not required by the canons of ethics to report the intentions of his or her client in such situations, only permitted to do so, and the Indiana mandatory reporting statute does not cover neglect or abuse which has not yet occurred (that is, there is no statutory obligation to report anticipated future events which may or may not happen).There is a clear Sixth Amendment concern, regarding the right to the effective assistance of counsel, that someone who has committed child abuse is still entitled to retain an attorney and to have the assistance of that attorney in defending the charges against them. This is true even if charges have not yet been filed.I would hazard to say that, in 2000, when I left Indiana, a majority of legal scholars in the state would have held that the attorney-client privilege would not excuse an attorney from making a report if the attorney has a good and credible reason to believe that a child had been the victim of abuse or neglect. An attorney who, in the course of investigating some matter on behalf of a client, develops a "reason to believe" that a child has been neglected or abused, based on something more than uncorroborated statements of his or her client, is without a doubt obliged to make a report, even if doing so would be detrimental to the interests of his or her client.Indiana is one of the few states that makes every person a mandatory reporter; in states where attorneys are not generally mandatory reporters, this issue does not arise. Furthermore, in some of the states where every person is a mandatory reporter, such as Delaware, Florida, Kentucky, or Maryland, a specific exception to the duty to report is created for the attorney-client privilege, and so, again, the issue does not arise because it has been dealt with specifically in the law.