Legal question - need advice if anyone knows [View All]

[kimi]

I'm not sure if this is the right forum, but I have a question and it seems to me that folks here might have some knowledge - anyway, here's the story:

My 17-year-old son got pulled over a couple weeks ago and ticketed for our van not being currently registered (it was expired, and yes, I should have handled it long before now, anyway, it's been handled now), and also for uninsured vehicle (it was insured, there just wasn't a current insurance card in the van at the time). So we've recently been getting all these letters from lawyers about representing us at trial for the uninsured vehicle situation, which has been sort of freaking me out, and since we haven't even heard from the court about a court date, I called the court traffic division yesterday. A very blase court clerk told me that the ticket had barely been gotten into the system, we'd receive a court date in a week or two, and she had no idea how these attorneys got our name and address but just to bring our current insurance card to court, no big deal.

Today a letter came from the court, State of Maryland vs My Son, and saying that it was important to be represented by an attorney for this serious traffic offense. Naive me, I just thought we show up at court with the current insurance card, show it to the judge, and he takes pity on us and sends us on our way. Am I totally out to lunch on this, or do I need to retain an attorney, for funds I really do not have at my disposal, to handle this? I guess I'm just sort of confused by what the clerk said versus what the letter tells me, and maybe some decent folks here at DU have some experience with this. I really don't want to drag my husband into this, he's deployed and has enough stress as it is. If anyone has any advice, I'd really appreciate it. Sorry for the long post, I'm just sort of lost on this matter. :crazy: