Form DC-CV-115: Maryland Failure to Pay Rent Notice, Delivery, and 10-Day Period

To fill out Form DC-CV-115, Maryland’s Notice of Intent to File a Complaint for Summary Ejectment (Failure to Pay Rent), download the current version from the Maryland Courts website, enter the landlord and tenant names and address, list the unpaid rent and any lease-authorized late fees with the exact date ranges they cover, check the box for one of the three approved delivery methods, and sign and date the form. The notice then has to reach the tenant by the method you checked, and the 10-day clock runs from the date you provide it.¹ Getting any of these fields wrong gives the tenant a defense that can get the whole eviction case dismissed, so the detail below matters.

Get the Current Version of the Form

DC-CV-115 is a free PDF on the Maryland Courts District Court forms page, and paper copies are available at any District Court Clerk’s office.² The current revision is Rev. 10/2024. The statute requires the notice to be on the form created by the Maryland Judiciary, so a letter you wrote yourself, a text message, or an older revision does not satisfy § 8-401(c) even if it contains all the same information.³

Landlord and Tenant Information

At the top of the page, fill in the landlord’s name, or the name of the agent managing the property on the landlord’s behalf. Then enter the tenant’s name and the address of the leased property. The form has space for up to four tenants. List every tenant named on the lease; leaving one off can create complications when you later file the complaint for repossession.⁴

Rent and Late Fee Amounts

The financial section is where most notices go wrong. Fill in the dollar amount of unpaid rent, check the box for whether that rent covers months or weeks, and write the date range the arrears cover (for example, “January 1, 2026 to March 31, 2026”). Late fees go on their own line, again with the month-or-week checkbox and the date range they correspond to. Add the two together on the total line.⁴

The form states that utilities, service charges, other fees, fines, and court costs may not be included in the total. Only unpaid rent and late fees permitted under the lease belong on this notice. Padding the amount with any of those other charges is one of the fastest ways to hand the tenant a valid defense.

A note on the form reminds tenants they can request an itemized rental ledger showing how the claimed amount was calculated. If you cannot produce that ledger on request, the case is in trouble, so pull your records together before you send the notice rather than after.

Late Fee Cap

Maryland limits late fees to 5% of the unpaid rent for the delinquent rental period. For weekly leases, the cap is $3 per week, up to $12 per month.⁵ The late fee also has to be authorized in a written lease. A fee the tenant never agreed to in writing, or one that exceeds the statutory cap, cannot be listed on the DC-CV-115.

Date, Delivery Method, and Signature

Below the amounts, write the date you are providing the notice and check the box for the delivery method you are using. Sign and date the form at the bottom and include your phone number, email, and mailing address.⁴ The checked box has to match what you actually do next, because the statute only recognizes three delivery methods.

Deliver the Notice the Right Way

The three approved methods are the only ones that count. Handing the notice to the tenant in person, slipping it under the door, leaving it in the mailbox, or sending it by certified mail does not satisfy the statute.³

First-class mail with a certificate of mailing. Take the completed notice to the post office and ask for a USPS certificate of mailing, which is a different product from certified mail. The clerk stamps a receipt showing the item was mailed on that date. Keep it.
Posted on the door. Attach the notice to the door of the leased property. This option works when the tenant is hard to reach by mail but gives you less proof of delivery, so take a timestamped photo of the notice on the door.
Electronic delivery. Email, text, or a tenant portal is valid only if the tenant previously requested or agreed to receive notices electronically. A tenant portal has to generate proof of transmission that the landlord can verify. Sending an email without that prior consent does not count.⁴

The 10-day period starts on the date the notice is provided. For mail, that is the date it is sent, not the date it arrives.

What Makes a Notice Defective

Tenants can challenge the DC-CV-115 at the hearing, and the court may dismiss the complaint if the challenge is sound.³ Before you send the form, check it against the problems that most often sink cases:

Using your own letter or an outdated form instead of the current DC-CV-115.
Including utilities, service charges, fines, or court costs in the total.
Listing a late fee that exceeds 5% of the unpaid rent for the period, or a late fee that isn’t in the written lease.⁵
Omitting a tenant named on the lease.
Checking a delivery box but using a different method, or using a method the statute doesn’t recognize.
Sending the notice by email or text without the tenant’s prior consent to electronic delivery.
Filing the complaint before the full 10 days have run, even if the tenant has said they will not pay.

A dismissal on any of these grounds means starting over with a fresh notice, another 10-day wait, and another filing fee, which usually adds a month or more to the timeline.

After the 10 Days

If the tenant pays the full amount listed on the notice within 10 days, the process stops for that period’s arrears. If new rent later goes unpaid, you would start again with a new DC-CV-115. If the tenant does not pay within 10 days, the next step is filing Form DC-CV-082, the Complaint for Repossession of Rented Property, in the District Court for the county where the property sits. Section 11 of DC-CV-082 asks you to confirm that the DC-CV-115 was provided and to state the date you provided it,⁶ which is one more reason to keep the stamped certificate of mailing, the door photo, or the portal transmission record with your file copy of the notice.

1
Maryland General Assembly. Maryland Real Property Code Section 8-401 – Failure to Pay Rent
2
Maryland Courts. District Court Forms by Category
3
Maryland General Assembly. Maryland Real Property Article 8-401
4
Maryland Courts. DC-CV-115 – Notice of Intent to File a Complaint for Summary Ejectment
5
Maryland General Assembly. Maryland Real Property Code Section 8-208 – Written Leases
6
Maryland Courts. DC-CV-082 – Failure to Pay Rent Landlord’s Complaint for Repossession of Rented Property