Maryland Guardianship Capacity Assessment Form 2026

Effective October 1, 2026, the Maryland Judiciary is replacing the separate physician, psychologist, and social worker certificate forms with a single unified capacity assessment. If you're filing a guardianship petition around that date, you need to know which form the clerk's office will accept.

What's Changing

Before October 2026: Guardianship petitions required two clinical certificates using one of three profession-specific forms:

• CC-GN-019 (Physician's Certificate)
• CC-GN-020 (Psychologist's Certificate)
• CC-GN-021 (Licensed Certified Social Worker-Clinical Certificate)

After October 2026: All three are replaced by one form — the redesigned CC-GN-019 (Certificate — Guardianship Capacity Assessment). The old CC-GN-020 and CC-GN-021 forms become obsolete.

Who Can Complete the New Form

The consolidated form opens the assessment to any qualified clinician:

• Licensed physicians
• Licensed psychologists
• Licensed certified social workers-clinical (LCSW-C)
• Nurse practitioners

Previously, each profession had its own form, which created administrative siloes and sometimes delayed filings when one specific type of clinician wasn't available. The new form lets the permitted combinations of two qualified clinicians use one assessment format — two physicians, or one physician plus one psychologist, LCSW-C, or nurse practitioner.

What the New Form Focuses On

The reform shifts the assessment from diagnostic labels toward contextual functional evaluation. Rather than simply documenting a diagnosis and declaring incapacity, the new form asks clinicians to evaluate:

• Specific decision-making capabilities in different domains (personal care, medical decisions, financial management)
• Functional impact of the diagnosis on instrumental activities of daily living
• Whether temporary or reversible factors (untreated hearing loss, medication effects, acute illness) have been addressed
• What level of support the person needs and in which specific areas

This matters because a diagnosis alone doesn't determine capacity. Two people with the same intellectual disability diagnosis may have very different functional abilities — one might manage daily finances independently while the other cannot. The new form captures that nuance.

The 21-Day Rule Remains

The timing requirement hasn't changed: at least one clinical evaluation must occur within 21 days before filing the petition. Both evaluations should be recent, but only one carries the strict 21-day window.

If you're scheduling evaluations near the October 1 cutoff, confirm with the clinicians which form version they should use. Using an obsolete form after the effective date could delay your filing if the clerk's office rejects it.

Cessation of Disability Form Also Updated

The companion form for guardianship termination — CC-GN-022 (Medical Certificate — Cessation of Disability) — is also being updated effective October 1, 2026. The new edition applies the same functional-assessment framework to restoration proceedings, where the question is whether the person has regained capacity.

Practical Impact for Families

The unified form simplifies logistics. Instead of tracking down a specific profession's form and finding the right clinician to match, you can work with a permitted combination of two qualified clinicians who know the person best — the treating physician and the psychologist who did the educational evaluation, for example, or the treating physician and the nurse practitioner at the group home.

The functional-capability focus also means the assessment better supports limited guardianship petitions. When the form documents capacity in some areas but not others, it creates a natural foundation for requesting authority only where it's genuinely needed.

The Maryland Adult Guardianship & Alternatives Guide covers the clinical evidence requirements and includes a document tracker that maps each form to its filing deadline, updated for the October 2026 changes.

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