Title of Declaration of Covenants

You should check with your Associations attorney. Their might be laws regarding the title when attaching it to the deed.

The question is before the attorney, but we haven't received an answer as yet.

Steve actually brought up a good point.

If you physically change the name of the document one could argue that it's not an amendment or a restatement of the existing document. As a new document, it wasn't attached to my deed when I purchased - I don't agree with it - therefore, I don't have to comply with it. Oh did the creation of this new document legally abolish the old document? Going on the same argument - the Association would have released me from my obligation to it.

I'm not saying that it's an argument that could be 100% won. However, does the Association want to take the chance and incur the legal fees if a group of property owners wanted to get together and argue it in court?

My advice - Stick with the original name.

Tim

WOW. I didn't expect to get such a strong outpouring -- just asking for some general reactions to the word "protections" in place of "restrictions."

Here's the scoop. We are re-doing our original Declaration (which was one God-awful mess of gibberish) in order to make it more readable and therefore more useful for the homeowners. We are an HOA, and it is committee of homeowners who have worked on the document a little over a year. The suggestion of using "protections" instead of "restrictions" came to us from a homeowner, who ostensibly got the idea from an attorney. The word "protections" is certainly more friendly than the negative word "restrictions" IMHO. However, the points raised here are cetainly well taken.

We are in the final stages of completion, and as I said earlier, the question of using one word in place of another in the name of our document is before our association attorney along with some other minor, clean-up questions.

We are amazed at the mistakes and inconsistencies we found as we re-did our document. Some of it is pretty important - like whether we are operating on a fiscal year or calendar year basis, the date and instrument number of the original recording of the plat, the lot numbers of homes in the community. We've been able to find and clear up these kinds of mistakes as we carefully, systematically worked on the document. It has been well worth the effort.

MarianneG,

Google: “CC&R”. I got 726,000 hits, including definitions of what CC&Rs are.
Google: “Covenants, Conditions and Restrictions”. I got 4,320,000 hits.

Google: “CC&P”. I got 30,700 hits, quickly scanning I found nothing relating to a HOA.
Google: “Covenants, Conditions and Protections”. I GOT ONE (1) HIT ONLY, and that was to your posting here.

Also to you Tim -- Congratulations for keeping on top of your documents. It is very easy to miss the conflicts that exist between and within documents.

SteveM9. There is no budgeted amount of $$ for the new document. We are authorized a "Contingency Fund." Every month, X dollars from each homwowner assessment goes into the contingency fund, which can be used for expenses beyond the budget. I am assuming that the BOD will use the contingency fund to pay the costs of attorney and printing of the final. Our costs will be minimal. I have typed the document on my personal computer and have used my own paper and ink, which I'm glad to donate because this kind of work is fun for me.

The attorney charges $220/hour and anticipates he will spend from 2.5 hours to 3.5 hours on our Covenant so the attorney's fee will be somewhere between $550 and $770. At this point, I don't know how much time he has spent and how much time he will yet need to spend to answer some final questions. I have been quite impressed with this attorney, who is a specialist in HOA issues. When we first contacted him, he said he would review our document without any charge to us and would give us his estimate of his charges. His costs to us began only after we contracted with him to review the document.

Printing charges will not be significant either. There are only 115 homes in our development so at a minimum we need to have 115 copies printed. At .09/page for 30 pages, the cost will be $310.50. I'm sure the BOD will want some extra copies printed so the print costs will be a bit more than $310.50.

I guess I should also point out that the homeowners who worked on re-stating the Covenant also donated their time, which was pretty significant. We reduced an unbelievably confusing document from 40 pages to 28 pages (in all 30 pages because we added 2 pages of Table of Contents). Essentially we removed all referecnes to the developer and replaced them with the name of our HOA. We moved like items together under one heading. For example, information about our Common Areas was spread throughout the original. We moved all info about Common Areas under one heading to make it easier to read. We simplified the language. We noted and corrected errors and inconsistencies. The attorney gave us language to strengthen collection of unpaid assessments and about violations of covenants. I'm very pleased with the outcome.

Is your community thinking of re-doing some of your documents, Steve?