Maryland Casualty Study Guide

A national casualty course teaches personal injury protection as one coverage with one opt-out, and teaches underinsured motorist coverage as something an insurer offers and an applicant may decline. Maryland does neither. Insurance Article Title 19, Subtitle 5 gives PIP two separate exits that are not substitutes for each other, and it makes enhanced underinsured motorist coverage something the insurer must provide rather than offer.

It then prints the paperwork for those two decisions in two different type sizes — a detail the state section asks about precisely because it is easy to reverse. Add the residual market, where a qualifying mistake voids the policy and the commission, and a workers’ compensation waiting period whose trap hides inside the word “more.”

Waiver and rejection are two different instruments

Start with the general route. Under Ins. § 19-506 only the first named insured may waive the § 19-505 PIP benefits, and the waiver is not personal to the person signing it. It binds each named insured, each listed driver, and every family member of the first named insured residing in the household who is at least 16 years old.

Read that age threshold as the boundary it is: because the statute reaches only household family members aged 16 or over, a 15-year-old family member in that same household is not bound by the waiver. Maryland wrote an age into the reach of a signature, and an item that drops a younger household member into the facts is testing exactly that.

Now the narrow route. Ins. § 19-506.1 is a rejection, and it is gated twice over: available only where the policy is written at the § 17-103(b) minimum limits, and then only to a defined class — a MAIF applicant who has not been continuously insured with MAIF for at least one year, or an applicant with another insurer whose prior policy was cancelled before its term ended. Its form is not a yes-or-no either. It requires a three-way written election: obtain, waive, or reject.

Both forms, waiver and rejection alike, must explain the coverage in 10 point boldface type.

Enhanced underinsured motorist coverage is provided, not offered

Ins. § 19-509.1 governs, and the verb is the whole rule. For policies issued on or after 1 July 2024 the insurer must provide enhanced underinsured motorist coverage. It is the default, and it goes into the policy unless the first named insured signs an affirmative written waiver — and then only after written notice of the coverage’s

“nature, extent, benefit, and cost.”

That waiver form must explain the declined coverage in at least 14 point boldface type, and must state that the insurer may not refuse to underwrite the applicant for declining to waive.

Hold one date alongside it: a second version of § 19-509.1, effective 30 June 2029, converts the model to offer-and-elect. Material written from the 2029 text describes a rule not in force today.

MAIF has three doors in, and the producer answers for the wrong one

Ins. § 20-502(a)(3)(i)-(iii) gives an applicant three separate routes into the Maryland Automobile Insurance Fund: a good-faith attempt rejected or refused by at least two Association members for a reason other than nonpayment; or a cancellation or nonrenewal by an Association member, again for a reason other than nonpayment; or having been uninsured for a continuous period of 12 months or more, verified by a commercial third-party database or a State agency.

“Other than nonpayment” qualifies the first two routes: a driver dropped for not paying the bill has not walked through either door. Then read who bears the cost of a wrong answer — Ins. § 20-502(e)(1)-(2):

“If a prospective insured fails to qualify under this section, any policy issued is void and a commission may not be paid by the Fund to a fund producer.”

Recoupment follows only after the person is referred to the Insurance Fraud Division.

Three days, fourteen days, and three different sections

The waiting period rewards reading the operator rather than the number. Lab. & Empl. § 9-620(a), (b), (c): it is 3 calendar days where the temporary total disability lasts 14 days or less, and where the employee was not paid for the day of injury, the Commission counts that unpaid day as one of the three. Compensation runs from the day of disability only where the disability lasts more than 14 days — so exactly 14 days does not trigger it. “Fourteen or more” is the distractor; “more than fourteen” is the statute.

The rates live elsewhere, and each has its own section. Lab. & Empl. § 9-621(a)(1)-(2) sets temporary total disability at two-thirds of the average weekly wage, not exceeding the State average weekly wage and not less than $50. Lab. & Empl. § 9-615 sets temporary partial disability at 50% of the difference between the average weekly wage and the wage-earning capacity, capped at 50% of the State average weekly wage. If a study aid cites one section for all three figures, it is guessing.