Can I eSign Maryland Lease Termination Letter

Can i document type e sign lease termination letter maryland

[Music] hello this is tony brown pentagraph with the kindergarten firm llc and today's video is on whether or not it is acceptable to send a notice to terminate tenancy by a text message in maryland and for those of you don't know i'm a real estate attorney and i'm also a landlord with an attorney here that is licensed to practice law in both maryland and the district of columbia so both maryland and dc your properties are located there feel free to reach out to me if you need any help with any sorts of i guess legal issues and you can do so by visiting my website at www.tpf.legal all right so to give a uh first give a quick disclaimer so this is legal information this is not legal advice so for legal advice you can contact an experienced landlord to the attorney that is uh you know licensed to practice law in your jurisdiction so on to back to the video topic the question are notices to terminate tenancy sent via text message are they valid um i think the best answer is uh maybe so many leases require notice to be sent by let's say mail or something in which case uh i think that in most cases that the contract terms would actually govern and that that would mean that i noticed by a text match is not valid but that is if the but that is in the case that the contract explicitly stipulates how notices must be delivered so a lot of times uh notices a contract may say something like a notice must be sent by certified mail in which case uh you know notices should only be sent by uh let's say certified mail they're not send by certified mail there's a strong argument that uh you know that that that a notice by text message is not valid you know presumably the parties put the um the required way for notice to be sent in the contract for a reason that said however assuming that the lease is silent on it i think there is a very strong argument that notices sent by a text message actually do comply with maryland law and that they are valid but in order to do that we have to look at the law and i have it here so this is maryland real property code section 8-402 b-1i so uh here's the law here i have the flashing on your screen so i'm not going to read the whole law here because i think that'll make this video um needlessly long but i will summarize it and then i will go to the one part that i think is uh you know very relevant at least for a uh you know um uh uh this the video topic of whether or not you know text messages sent in writing are valid so the quick say but if you wanna you know you could feel free to you know pause the screen and you know read the entire law yourself but allow me to you know do my quick interpretation so my quick interpretation of what this law is saying is that you know essentially you have to give notice in writing um let's say at least one month before the expiration of the term that you want to uh evict the tenant then uh that you want to tend to believe and if they don't leave then you can file a um a hold over action in order to get them out so that's essentially what this law is saying but you notice that i have um in writing bolded because uh in order to comply with the terms of the statute the notice must be in writing so let's move on to my next slide so is a text message a writing think about for a second is the text message of writing well are there letters yeah is are there rum words yeah those sentences yeah so um i think it's i think are the paragraphs maybe so uh is is a text message a a writing um i think so but if if not then you know why isn't it a writing you know i can't think of any arguments that a text message wouldn't be a writing i feel like that would be kind of like i guess an absurd argument to make but um does the medium by which letters are written not make it a writing um i do not i do not think so so that said um uh uh yeah i think i think it's i think it's a writing which brings me to my my next point um why i so even though i do think that is under the strict interpretation of law that text messages are a valid way to i guess you know terminate a tendency assuming that the contract doesn't you know uh stipulate that or restrict how notices may be sent i still think sending notices about a text message are a very bad idea because i think that there is a very big potential problem with delivery issues someone's phone could be broken it could be missing could be stolen maybe they could just have uh have bad service or sometimes the message may just not be delivered there's all sorts of reasons why messages don't end up being delivered i mean it happens to me sometimes that makes sense when the message is oh i didn't receive the message so that's why i think that you know uh the best way to send a notice is probably by you know the old school methods you know say certified mail or let's say pro or at least mail some form of tracking you know any form any mail form for tracking was fedex usbs i don't care any sort of uh you know proof of tracking along with perhaps posting it to the door and taking a picture of it i think there's also a great way to deliver notices as well so anyway so am i right this last side uh awesome i don't think that it matters because you know i'm not a judge and i've never had the arguments before judge and hopefully never will have the arguments before judge because my clients will send notices in the way that i recommend so why am i answering the topic question good question because uh an anonymous uh tenant actually asks this question on the forum and i know that this is something that i could very well end up having to argue before judging the future so uh the art of luring isn't about let's say knowing the answers it's about being able to give the best arguments in support of your answers so and i just kind of you know demonstrated that to you guys here at least you know my thought process and who knows maybe you'll like it maybe you want to hire me after that we'll see anyways thanks for watching you can book me by visiting my website at www.tpf.legal if you have a question that you would like to have featured here in one of these slideshows you can just you can go visit my link at www.tpf.legal4slash you can ask questions there you can always check out my uh my facebook group you know tpf uh real estate law content hub you can always perhaps ask questions there or uh you know you can um join there and uh you'll see uh you can keep up with my content and things that i'm posting these videos this content you know i'm posting it all in there anyways so uh thanks for watching and uh please like and subscribe you know that that helps me out a lot so i keep making these videos alrighty thanks for watching