Maryland domicile: not so great, but here's what I went with

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Joined
Mar 5, 2022
Messages
21
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18
Location
Maryland, US
I'm trying to document the process I go through trying to get this stuff started in Maryland, since I don't usually see much about the east coast and I'd like to at least make sure that the next person who does a forum search for "Maryland domicile" has at least something to go based on.

For domicile, I started out by talking with the lawyer (based in Texas) that Escapees recommends. I was aware that I could retain his services and he would help me craft the illusion that I live in Texas. I'm sure he's good at his job and that he would have helped me do that and it would have been okay. But I wasn't comfortable with the degree of deception involved. My home base is Maryland. I don't want to pretend otherwise if I can avoid it.

What the lawyer told me was that everything would start with what address I put on my drivers license; and once I figured that out, everything else would fall into place. He recommended calling the DMV and asking what they wanted me to do. I did that. What the DMV said is that, essentially, I should just keep trying different mail forwarding services and maybe I would get lucky and find one that isn't listed as a business. They didn't have a process, other than that. What they told me was basically: if the web site will accept your change of address, you're good. If the address is bad, the web site won't even take it.

I decided to be smart about it. I figured out how to use the USPS address verification API, and I also subscribed to a third party address verification service, and I used both services to look up every Maryland address on ipostal1, as well as some smaller mom-and-pop places listed on yelp. I identified a few good candidates that really looked residential, according to all the data I was getting back from USPS and Xverify. But none of them worked on the change-of-address form.

The next thing I tried was homeless resources. I made quite a few phone calls. Every hotline I tried was very friendly and sympathetic but they had no idea where to send me. They kept bouncing me between different hotlines.

Eventually what I ended up doing was the "ask a friend if I can use their address" approach. The friend said yes. So that's what I'm going with for now. If I want to later I can revisit the homeless-resources option. I gave up for now because I was tired of being bounced from hotline to hotline. But maybe in a year or so I can try to get into a better domicile situation. The "ask a friend" approach will work for now.
 
Since many states don’t have an apparent easy way to handle nomads with no permanent address you end up having to find a way to work around their inadequate system. Don’t be surprised if you have difficulty. Get a passport while you still have a permanent address as it will make identification issues easier to solve later on.
 
Hello fellow, East coaster. I for sometime have been talking about organizing East Coast nomads never got beyond talking unfortunately. Everybody came up with their own ideas of how it should be Ron and what should be done and there wasn’t much unity. But I still dream about it. If I had any more knowledge of computer science, I would organize.. Problem is that I think my vision is totally different than others. We should get together and compare notes about camping and such. I’m in south-central Pennsylvania right now but planning to fly to Florida shortly in my 1998 Dodge conversion van flying is difficult. but I intend to do it In early December. Any chance of us meeting up before I get too far south? Some people don’t like to put their emails out there but I don’t give a darn you can email me at [email protected] or PM me here on this forum.
 
"What the DMV said is that, essentially, I should just keep trying different mail forwarding services and maybe I would get lucky and find one that isn't listed as a business."

A DMV that employs humans who care and can think outside the box, what a concept.
 
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