Spouses and Roommates on Board & Subboard

In our HOA, we have three, previously four, couples that serve on two boards. One will serve on the master and the other serves on the regular association board. The master represents the homeowners and has the right to assess the other board. This seems like a conflict of interest in any community, but especially in mine which is very small. Has anyone else dealt with that: having one household have members and nonmember residents serve on two boards with assessing and fining authority?

It depends. What does your governing documents say?

I once was the appointed Treasurer while my wife was the elected President. To stop accusations such as yours, I refrained from all voting and just did the book-keeping. Our problem was the Board appointed me as no one else was willing to volunteer for the position. With small associations, you can run into problems like this when no one is willing to volunteer for the Board. In our case we absolutely MUST have at least 3 members on the Board to comply with the Washington State HOA Act and other Board members were not willing to be Treasurer.

This isn't always a black and white issue.

Sorry don't know why the double post.

Also I misspoke. It is the Washington State Non-Profit Corporation Act that requires at least 3 Board members. Not the HoA Act.

Karen, I'm not an attorney but as I understand it every State requires a corporation to have by-laws in order to operate. Usually the AIC & Covenants require the HOA to have a Board of Directors (sometimes called Trustees) the by-laws list the qualifications to serve. These are often very lax when the Declarant is in charge since members of the Declarant's Board are often not homeowners but employees.

If the by-laws do not specify that you must be a member or their spouse to serve then anyone is eligible. If they don't limit it to one member per household at a time then it is perfectly OK for both parties to be elected and serve. Theoretically you could have a husband, wife and their adult children comprising the entire Board. That is if the other homeowners elect them and they are eligible under the by-laws to serve.

The one vote per household argument has been tried before but that is one vote per items the household is eligible to vote on i.e. elections or document changes. The Board is a different animal and every member on it is entitled to vote on Board business, no matter how related they are.

Non-owners can easily open the door for financial and legal abuse. I for one do not believe having non-owners on any board is a wise move.

While you did not say so directly. Many Covenants, Bylaws say one vote per unit no matter how many owners. This means if owned by more then one person (corporation or hubby-wifey) then one person has to be designated the voting member.

I say if the Covenants, Bylaws say only owners/members can serve on the BOD, then a co-owning husband and wife cannot both serve as one is the designated voting owner/member. You cannot have one vote per unit but a hubby and wife both have votes on the BOD Do you see the conflict as I do?

Now I could see having "fellow owners" serving on committees, but not on the BOD.

My view on it.

As I said, creating the perception of unfairness should be avoided whenever possible. Sometimes, it simply isn't possible.

Real life example:

In my Association, we simply did not have enough volunteers to fill the Board (we only filled 3 out of 5 seats). Per our governing documents, a Director had to serve as President and VP. Per our governing documents, only the Treasurer could hold two offices at the same time and that other office was limited to Secretary (i.e. Secretary/Treasurer). However, the Treasurer refused to accept the office and duties of Secretary.

We begged and knocked on doors for volunteers for 30 days. However, nobody else stepped forward. Therefore, the Board appointed my wife as Secretary. However, to try and avoid creating a perception of unfairness, we did not appoint my wife as a Director. Thus, even though both of us (my wife and I) attended and participated in Board meetings, my wife had no vote. Hopefully we made this clear enough to the membership.