Do revisions to adopted community rules have to be filed with recorder?

Richard,

If I understand correctly, your proposal is that an association could save money on the costs of recording by filing a single sheet of paper that includes links to websites where the documents are maintained. While it is probably legal (meaning that the recorder will accept and record the paper and you will not get arrested) I think this creates more problems than it solves.

One reason for recording CC&R's, for example, is to provide indisputable evidence of what the document states. By directing everyone to a website, the issue will always be whether the content of the website is an accurate statement and unaltered from the original. That is, does it say the same thing today as it did twenty years ago when I bought my property? You would be reducing recording costs at the expense of endless litigation.

When documents are recorded, the recording agency is a neutral party lacking motive to alter any part of any document. Most states impose criminal penalties upon public employees who willfully alter recorded documents. By putting the document on a website, control of the content never falls under the aegis of the recorder. The content remains in the hands of those who may have a motive to alter the text. This provides fodder for lawyers who will run up enormous bills dickering over the accuracy of the document.

Then there is the issue of keeping the website going. Once a document is recorded it remains a public document forever, even if later documents negate some or all of the terms of the original. This means that if you wish to enforce the terms of a document recorded as you propose you would have to maintain the website forever. It would seem to me that the cost of hosting a website for the next several centuries would far exceed the costs of recording the entire document in the first place.

To the best of my knowledge your proposal remains untested from a legal standpoint. I have no idea whether a court would even accept the idea that a party has recorded notice by pointing to a website instead of simply recording the actual notice itself. The statutes in my state provide that a recorded document may reference another recorded document but is silent as to referencing unrecorded material. A valid argument could be raised that by allowing the inclusion of referenced recorded documents the legislature chose to not include references to unrecorded documents under the principle of expressio unius est exclusio alterius (The expression of one thing is the exclusion of another).

Bottom line is that the benefit of paying less for recording documents is not outweighed by the costs of web hosting and potential litigation.