Challenging The Suspension of Your License After a DUI In Wicomico County
If you are arrested for DUI and your license is suspended you have the right to challenge your suspension with the Maryland Motor Vehicle Administration. Below a Wicomico County DUI lawyer provides more information on challenging your license and what you should know. For legal assistance schedule a consultation today.
Can I Challenge The Suspension of My Driver’s License in Wicomico County?
In Wicomico County, a driver whose license is suspended for DUI can challenge the suspension or, depending on the breath test results, ask that their suspension be modified so that the driver is able to drive for some very restricted purposes such as work and school.
When the driver is initially charged with driving under the influence, they are going to receive some very important documents from the law enforcement officers that explain the driver’s right to contact the MVA regarding the suspension of their license. These papers are necessary in order to challenge the suspension of their license, so it is important for the driver to maintain these papers in a safe place as you have to move very quickly in order to request a hearing or challenge the suspension of your license.
What Is the Time Limit to Challenge a License Suspension?
There is a very critical window of time that takes place upon the driver being stopped and receiving those papers from the police officer. If a Maryland driver either refuses to take the test or takes the breath test and blows a certain result, their actual license will be taken from them on the spot by the law enforcement officer and the law enforcement officer instead is going to give the driver a temporary paper license, and the temporary license is also going to contain the instructions for what to do in order to request a hearing.
The driver will be able to drive on that temporary license for forty-five days. If the driver takes no action in requesting an MVA hearing, then their privilege to drive is going to be suspended on the forty sixth day and will continue until the license suspension is over.
If the person requests an MVA hearing and if that hearing is received at the MVA postmarked within ten days of the date of the stop, then that temporary forty-five day license will automatically convert into a temporary license to drive until the MVA hearing takes place. The person will receive in the mail a document from the MVA that they will carry along with their temporary license that shows that their privilege to drive on that temporary license has been extended. Therefore that ten-day window to get the paperwork into MVA is critical.
What If The MVA Doesn’t Get The Paperwork Within 10 Days?
Generally speaking, the MVA will allow the temporary license to continue even if they don’t get the paperwork within ten days, but there is no guarantee that they will do that. If the MVA doesn’t receive any request for a hearing within thirty days, if the driver attempts to request the hearing thirty days after the stop, then they should anticipate that their privilege to drive will be suspended on the forty-sixth day. So, those time frames are critical.
In order to request the MVA hearing, the driver needs to fill out paperwork that they receive from the officer and they have to return it to the MVA. They have to also include a filing fee to request the hearing. All of the details of how to do that are included in the paperwork that the driver received from the police officer.