How to Fill Out DC-CV-115: Maryland's Notice of Intent, Field by Field (2026)

DC-CV-115 is where every Maryland Failure to Pay Rent (FTPR) case begins. It is a single page, it costs nothing to serve, and it is the document that quietly decides whether your eventual court filing survives. Defective notice is the top cause of FTPR dismissals statewide, and almost every defective notice traces back to a box on this form that was filled in wrong, a charge that did not belong, or a day count that came up short.

This is the field-by-field walkthrough of the current form (Rev. 10/2024): what goes in every box, which service methods actually count, and the specific mistakes that surface three weeks later as a dismissal at the bench.

The court never sees DC-CV-115 when you serve it. It sees it three weeks later, at the hearing, when the tenant's defense is that the notice was wrong. Fill it out like the judge is reading it, because eventually the judge is.

DC-CV-115's official title is Notice of Intent to File a Complaint for Summary Ejectment (Failure to Pay Rent). It implements the written-notice requirement in Md. Code, Real Property § 8-401(c), and the current PDF lives at courts.state.md.us/.../dccv115.pdf. Bilingual versions exist for Spanish, French, and Chinese. Always work from the current revision: the District Court has revised this form more than once since it was introduced in 2021.

For the legal background on the 10-day rule itself, start with Maryland's 10-Day Notice Requirement. This post is about the form.

Before You Fill Anything In

The form takes ten minutes. The preparation is what protects you:

• A current rent ledger. The amounts you put on DC-CV-115 need to be reconstructable, because the form itself tells the tenant they can demand an itemized accounting of debits and credits. If your ledger cannot back the number, fix the ledger first.
• The lease. Late fees may only be claimed if the lease authorizes them, and only up to 5% of the monthly rent.
• Every tenant's name. The form has lines for up to four tenants. A tenant you leave off the notice is a tenant you will have trouble naming on the complaint later.
• A service plan. Decide before you print whether you are mailing with a certificate of mailing, posting to the door, or (only if the tenant asked for it in advance) delivering electronically.

DC-CV-115, Field by Field

The FROM Block: Landlord or Agent

The top of the form identifies who is giving the notice:

• Landlord/Agent name. Use the landlord's legal name as it appears on the lease and deed. If the property is held by an LLC, the LLC is the landlord. A property manager or agent providing the notice on the landlord's behalf can be listed here, but keep the identification consistent with the lease, because the eventual DC-CV-082 plaintiff must match the legal owner of the rent claim.
• Address, city, state, ZIP. Where you receive mail, typically a business address rather than the rental property.
• Telephone and email. A working number and inbox. The whole point of the notice is to give the tenant a path to cure, and a dead phone number undercuts that.

The TO Block: Tenants 1 Through 4

List every tenant on the lease, exactly as named on the lease. The form provides four tenant lines. Middle initials, suffixes, spellings: copy them, do not approximate them. A name mismatch between the lease, the notice, and the later complaint is a classic defective-identification problem.

Then the tenant-side address block:

• Address, city, state, ZIP. The rental property, including the unit number for multi-unit buildings. Missing unit numbers are a recurring notice defect.
• Telephone and email address(es). Fill in what you have.

"THIS IS NOT A NOTICE OF EVICTION"

This banner is printed on the form, along with the statement that an action for repossession may be initiated if the total is not paid within 10 days after the landlord provides the notice, and that the tenant has a legal right to dispute the charges. You do not edit this language. Do not paraphrase it, retype it, or build your own notice without it: the statutory text is part of what makes the notice compliant. Use the official form.

The Amount Box: Rent, Late Fees, Total

This is the section that decides cases. Three dollar lines:

• Rent. The past-due rent, with checkboxes for whether the period is measured in months or weeks, and date fields for the period claimed (from and to).
• Late fees. Also with a months/weeks period. The form's own footnote says these are due "pursuant to the terms of your lease," which means: no lease authorization, no late fee. And Maryland caps late fees at 5% of the monthly rent.
• Total. Rent plus late fees. Nothing else.

The form is explicit that the total does not include other charges related to utilities, services, other fees, fines, and court costs. Landlords who fold a water bill, a repair chargeback, or a prior court cost into the notice total have overstated the claim, and an overstated notice is a defective notice.

The Ledger Obligation

Printed on the form: at the tenant's request, the landlord must promptly provide an itemized accounting of debits and credits showing how the claimed amount was calculated. Treat this as a standing audit requirement. If a tenant requests the ledger and you cannot produce one that matches the notice, you have handed the defense its opening argument.

Landlord/Agent Contact Information (If Different)

A second contact block for a phone, email, and address different from the FROM block, typically used when an agent or property manager serves the notice but payment or questions should route somewhere else. Fill it in when it applies; leave it blank when it does not. Do not leave the tenant with no working way to reach whoever can accept the cure payment.

Date and Method of Providing Notice

The compliance heart of the form. It records the date the notice is provided and the method, with three recognized options:

1. First-class mail with a certificate of mailing. The certificate of mailing (a USPS proof-of-mailing record) is what turns ordinary mail into provable service. Mail without it leaves you arguing about whether the notice was ever sent.
2. Affixed to the door of the leased property. Posting. Take a timestamped photo showing the notice on the door with the unit identifiable. The photo is your evidence at the hearing.
3. Delivered electronically, by email, text message, or an electronic tenant portal, and only at the request of the tenant. This is the trap. Electronic delivery is not a default option; the tenant must have requested it. If a tenant portal is used, the portal must provide proof of transmission that the landlord can verify. No request on record means email and text do not count, no matter how clearly the tenant read the message.

The date entered here starts the 10-day clock.

Signature Line

Date, signature of the landlord, attorney, or agent, and an attorney number field (for attorneys; landlords and non-attorney agents leave it blank). Signing is what makes the document a served notice rather than a draft, so sign the copy you actually provide.

The Resources Block

The bottom third of the form is preprinted tenant-facing information: the Access to Counsel in Evictions law, the courts' mediation program, rental assistance resources, and the Maryland Court Help Centers. This block is part of the official form. Do not trim it to save paper. A notice missing required content is a notice the tenant can attack, and the state's housing help portal at mdcourts.gov/legalhelp/housing is where several of those references point.

The 10-Day Math

The notice tells the tenant the landlord may act if the total is not paid within 10 days after the landlord provides the notice. The practical rules:

• The clock runs from the date of providing notice recorded on the form, not the date you filled it out.
• The 10 days must fully run before you file DC-CV-082. Filing before the period expires is a dismissal, full stop.
• If the tenant pays the full amount within the window, the FTPR path stops. Partial payment does not void the notice, but the amount you later claim on DC-CV-082 must subtract everything received. See How to Fill Out DC-CV-082 for the filing-date amount rules.

Build slack into your calendar. Counting days wrong by one is the cheapest possible way to lose a month.

The Five DC-CV-115 Errors That Wreck FTPR Cases

1. Non-rent charges in the total. Utilities, fines, service fees, or old court costs folded into the claimed amount. The form excludes them by its own text.
2. Late fees without lease authority, or over 5%. Both defects are visible on the face of the notice at the hearing.
3. Electronic service without a tenant request. Email and text feel modern and provable. Without the tenant's prior request, they are not valid service methods for this notice.
4. Missing or wrong tenant names. A tenant on the lease but not on the notice, or "John Smith" for a lease that says "Jonathan Smith."
5. Filing before day 10 has fully run. The notice was perfect; the calendar was not.

Every one of these is invisible on the day you serve. Every one of them is fatal at the hearing.

How EvictPro Handles DC-CV-115

EvictPro generates the Notice of Intent free at /notice-of-intent, with no account required. It is the front door of the platform's end-to-end Maryland eviction workflow, and it is built around exactly the failure modes above:

• Field-level completion of the official form. Landlord, tenants (all of them), property, amounts, and service details are captured once and placed in the right boxes.
• Amount discipline. Rent and lease-authorized late fees only, late fees capped at 5%, excluded charges kept out of the total.
• A tamper-evident record. The PDF you serve is stored and hashed, so at the hearing you can show precisely what the tenant received and when it was generated.
• The clock, tracked. The 10-day window is calendared for you, so escalation to a court filing cannot jump the gun.
• One-click escalation. When the window runs and the rent is still unpaid, the same case data flows into the DC-CV-082 filing stage: $99, base court filing fee included, with Maryland's $5-per-tenant service fee billed at cost. See pricing for every stage.

That continuity is the point. The notice, the amounts, the tenants, and the service proof move through the whole case as one record, whether you manage one rental or a portfolio of hundreds. The walkthrough of the full process from notice to judgment is at The Maryland FTPR Process, Step by Step.

Related reading:

• Maryland's 10-Day Notice Requirement: What Landlords Need to Know
• How to Fill Out DC-CV-082: A Field-by-Field Maryland Filing Guide
• The Maryland FTPR Process, Step by Step
• How to Evict a Tenant in Maryland: The Complete 2026 Guide

Ready to serve a notice that will still be standing at the hearing?