Opinion needed Covenant?

One more piece of this. People living in Plat 1 and Plat 2 had no idea this case was going on. No one except for them individual parcels have signed or authorized anything.

The HOA argued for 11 months that these bylaws were valid and binding. They won..within 24 hours they began the campaign to change them, because they found out they were really going to have to follow them. The bylaws were written in error the first time when it added the Plats..the owners of the parcels in these plats never had any idea that this association existed. They were just innocent victims of incompetance.

The association really wants to be voluntary until the property changes hands and the new owners will not have any idea of what has happened. The association only argued the bylaws were valid, because they supported a successor interest (except for the small problem of they contained the wrong properties) If the bylaws were not valid then they had no case. I dont know what they were thinking was going to happen if the bylaws were deemed valid by a judge..seems they did not plan for any of this.

So any how, the association is trying to "fix" this mess they created. All members have never been notified of any meeting, an assessment was issued without following the bylaws, the assessment was for the wrong amount (based on number of members), these "new" members are pissed because they knew nothing about any of this. The old members are pissed because they have been over charged for repairs on the common property..etc.

My personal involvement is just to set back and hold them accountable, because I was the one that tried to stop them in the first place.

The bylaw committee has been working on this for 6 years. In six years there has been no change or report from the bylaws committee..just that they are working on it (it was only in the court case was it discovered the corporation we thought the bylaws were for does not exist, that is how we wound up with an HOA without CCR's. The only thing this HOA is one common park, so there is no other business to take care of. The HOA does not oversee anything that happens with anyones home or any of the neighborhoods. We could not vote anyone off the board, because we did not know who the members were to notify them of a meeting to have a vote and honestly I dont necessarily think they are intentionally doing anything wrong it just is such a massive problem it was easier not to deal with it. The problem is just being passed on to the new owners of the properties.

They would mean the group using the HOA name..the problem is that now that the judge has ruled the bylaws are and always were valid, every thing the group has done since then is not. They have never sent meeting notifications to every member, they have not followed the bylaws procedure for assessments. The bylaws say 3 BOD, there are 7 currently. The bylaws list at least 97 properties (one membership per property) The current HOA named group has never sent a meeting notification to more than 50. I believe we now have about 47 members that are six years in errers on their dues for an organization they did not know they belonged to. The entire board was replaced in 2008 without a single written notification of the meeting being sent out. They just happened to be the people that were hanging out on the beach after the declarants passing away.

I still dont really understand the motivation they had to argue to have the bylaws declared valid, except they verbal arguement was made it was a voluntary HOA, but the judge ruled specifically that the bylaws were valid. So even to change them (if you can) you would need to contact all property owners...How would you like to get that call? You have been drafted into a HOA, would you like to get out? Oh by the way you owe six years of dues.

Thanks for the clairfication. This does sound like a huge mess.

This story is very involved but I do have CCR's on my property. It names the HOA. When the dispute arose over who was a member of the HOA (everyone believed something different) Only in the middle of the court case, it was disclosed two completely different corporations had used the same name. The one listed on my CCR's administratively dissolved in 1980, the new one formed in 1986. When I purchased my property I received the paperwork for the dissolved corporation only, that was in 2004. I had no idea about the dissolution.

In 2004 bylaws were recorded with the county after I purchased my lot, not on everyones lots but naming everyones lots. Thus creating the total confusion. When I did get a copy of the bylaws, I still thought there was only one corporation. I believed we had a conflict in membership description and had a problem with only 30% of the lots having CCR's. I probably would not have taken the same action had at anytime the HOA would have mentioned the two corporations from the beginning. As a matter of fact they provided the 1971 documents to the court and not the 1986 documents until the last minute.

So now recorded on the deeds in the bylaws. The CCR's are still on my deed and now so are the bylaws, using the exact same name, but they are really two completely unrelated corporations, one of them being dissolved.

One clarification the meeting to create the bylaws happened before I bought my lot and recorded after I had already closed

Tish, It is my guess that your HOA ceased to pay the state corporation filing fee and lost their corporation status with the state for a period of time. And the HOA may have not been active for a few years. After which the homeowners reinitiated the HOA and may have renewed incorporation with the state under the same name. Meanwhile, I presume your CC&Rs have continued to be in effect since the development began. Check with your County to determine if CC&Rs were ever filed.

Your current Bylaws appear to be "so so" as far as establishing organizational structure. But I think they are very limited compared to most of the CCC&Rs I have read.

Tish, I would contact an experienced HOA attorney to determine who's property is legally in the association. If the owners in Plat 1 and Plat 2 do have Covenants which allow for manditory assessment then the Covenants should define whether or not there is any way to terminate.