Bulletin: MD000018

Dear Associates:

Please contact the Maryland Office for pages which contain summaries of those bills enacted or enrolled by the Maryland General Assembly during the 1997 Legislative Session which affect title to real property, escrow practices and the title industry in Maryland. The form of the presentation of the material is designed to give the reader interspersed comments from Stewart Title Guaranty Company's underwriting counsel (highlighted with a star) along with the full text of the summary recently put out by the Code Revision Committee, Section of Real Property, Planning and Zoning, Maryland State Bar Association, chaired by Nancy Haas, Esquire.

Rather than re-create the wheel on presentation of the summary of the real property legislation from the recently concluded Legislative Session and give the reader a summary of a summary, counsel has decided to present the summaries as compiled by Nancy Haas' committee so that the reader can absorb the summaries along with some comments from underwriting counsel as to sections which are of day-to-day interest to the title attorney and/or title company. Counsel is grateful to Nancy Haas and her committee members for the many, many hours of work which went into the summary. The Maryland State Bar Association puts out a similar summary yearly and always does a very commendable job on its presentation, with this year's version being no exception.

It is strongly recommended that the reader study all of the summaries presented to become familiar with the changes recently enacted, storing the fact of the changes (not necessarily all of the details of the changes) in the back of the mind for future reference and study. Should you have any questions regarding this bulletin, please do not hesitate to contact Company Counsel.