Filing documents conflict

Have to refer you to Carnac the Magnificent.

Run. And remember, suing the HOA is suing yourself.

Alabama?

What was recorded?

My question relates to checking with the county/counties via their records - accessible online?

I would never accept what someone provided without confirming the recorded docs.

You ought to post the docs. I will respond to anyone making snarky remarks about Alabama. (I am not going to name anyone, but their initials are JC77.) Gulf Shores will always be a favorite place of mine. My favorite Christmas story, Truman Capote's "A Christmas Memory," is said to be based on Capote's time as a child in Monroeville, Alabama.

Yes George. Again they are filed in the RIGHT county. However, it also says they are filed in the neighboring county. Which the city it is in is in that county. I just think something is confused.

Not sure if I should bring this up or not. Afraid they may assign me as a HOA representative of some sort... LOL!

Thanks Augustine. I am NOT originally from Alabama. However, don't find the snide remarks against anyone's state particularly positive. In my area where I live most of the people are not from here. It's rare to find a born/bred Alabamian. We don't really like Californians nor the "Florida man". You insult our schools we point you to Mississippi.

Yes, Alabama can bless your heart for your state you live in too...

Is the declaration from 2016 or later?

The builder I work for occasionally develops communities that cross county lines. In this case the community is split into two different neighborhoods in our computer systems, and buyers are given paperwork specific to the neighbor they're buying in.

Different counties can have different laws, and in one of our new communities the two neighborhoods are served by different utility companies. So yes, it can get confusing.

People also seem to use the word "Declaration", "CC&Rs" and "Bylaws" interchangeably. As far as I know, the Bylaws address different things and are separate. At least in my part of the world, the Declaration may not include other legal agreements such as easements or maintenance agreements with surrounding property owners. In my mind, these other legal agreements form part of the CC&Rs.

An example: in my community, buyers were not given copies of these additional items even though they contain language about our obligations to pay for maintaining things that are not part of our property. This has come back to bite us. A number of homeowner were upset that these other agreements were not disclosed along with the Declaration and Bylaws, and one threatened to sue the board (of course). According to the association lawyer, though, these additional agreements were recorded with the county which is considered "disclosure".

HOAs in Alabama that are created in 2016 or later are governed by the Alabama Homeowners' Association Act.

Some answers are in the law, which has a definition of a HOA, declaration, etc.

HOAs must be incorporated and must file Articles of Incorporation, bylaws and cc or r's with the state (Secretary of State), in addition to the declaration which is recorded with the county.

https://law.justia.com/codes/alabama/2016/title-35/chapter-20/

I think this will make more sense if I summarize the history of the various plats involved:

Around 2000 a single plat of land was divided into three plats. One of the three now has a strip mall on it. The second has a daycare center. The third is my community. The first two sit along a major highway, with a landscaped entrance leading into the parking lots serving the businesses. There is also a median in the middle of the highway that prevents left turns into and out of the entrance way. The entrance also gives access to our property. Our property has no direct access to the highway - we must use property owned by one or both of the other two plat owners. Plat 2 (the strip mall) has a service road running behind it and sitting entirely within Plat 2. The service road connects the parking lot/entrance complex to public road which intersects the major highway (there is a traffic light here). Anyone who wants to turn left onto the major highway must use this traffic light.

I hope that makes sense.

The agreements:

* One is titled "Reciprocal Access Easement Agreement", document type Easement. This gives homeowners in my community the right to use the service road behind the strip mall to get to the traffic light. In exchange for this, we are responsible for 100% of the maintenance on the road. (This isn't cheap since the road gets beaten to pulp by beer delivery trucks and large trash haulers. It is a source of annoyance to some, especially since the road owner has no way to stop anyone from using it - both ends must remain open to allow the large deliver vehicles to maneuver.)

* The other is titled "Maintenance Modification Agreement", document type Agreement. This provides for shared responsibility for the landscaped entrance area, up to 50 feet in from the highway. Costs are split 25%/25%/50%, with our condos providing the 50%. Note that this area is owned by the owners of Plat 1 (strip mall) and Plat 2 (daycare).

Comments:

These agreements run with the land.

We asked our attorney do some investigating to see whether there would be any way to get out from under the service road agreement - it involves enough money to be a burden, we need to include it in our reserve studies so that the expense doesn't get lost, and in my view it's unfair as written. The businesses in the strip mall do the large majority of damage since the road is not commercial grade, and the owner of the property has no incentive to change this. Shared responsibility for maintenance would be fair.

Our only option would be to legally abandon the easement and tell our owners to use the main entrance only (ie. no left turns) - let the owner of the road try to figure out how to keep us out. Our lawyer's opinion was that the owner could come after us since he could argue that we didn't in fact abandon the easement. I asked how the association could be held responsible for owners' behavior when the owners are off our property, but I never got a good answer to this.

Personal opinion: our developer threw us under the bus when negotiating these agreements. The first one wasn't even recorded until almost half the units in our community were sold, so it was not "disclosed" in any way. Yet homeowners are legally committed to a significant expense by the agreements - which is why I believe they should be considered part of our CC&Rs.

CathyA3, thank you. Interesting. Can you guesstimate what fraction of people's assessment goes, one way or another, to maintaining that one road? I realize that such a guesstimate will have a lot of assumptions. Maintenance is key to getting the most life out of a road. How many feet of road are we talking about?

Here's my Charlie Brown "Arghhh" to this. To me your explanation of the related conundrums, especially the idea of replacing with commercial grade, equate to a condo's nightmare, insofar as explaining to the membership so as somehow, not to get push back.

We let the membership know about this since it came as a surprise to all of us. I doubt we'll ever replace the road with commercial grade - I'm not even sure myself what we should do since, bottom line, it's not our property.

When we first discovered the problem, we talked to our attorney and I insisted that road repairs be treated like any other reserve item (prior to that, the cost hadn't been anywhere in our budget). The attorney wrote up his findings for the membership, we mailed everyone a copy, and he also attended our next annual meeting to discuss. Surprisingly few had any comments. In fact, I was one of most outraged over it, as anyone who sat in a board meeting with me will verify. :-)

I'm being pragmatic, though. The owner of the strip mall property has deep pockets and "connections" (he builds multi-million dollar homes in area HOAs) - we don't want to get into a legal spat with him because he can afford to tie us up until we're bankrupt. But this is another reason why I believe our developer threw us under the bus - I think he was more interested in "making nice" with a colleague than he was in doing right by members of our association.

It's been an eye-opening lesson. And since these easement agreements and "connections" are pretty common in HOA- and COA-land, I suspect many buyers get unpleasant surprises like this if they don't know to look for them.

On the positive side, and just from where I am sitting, at least your attorney remains impressive.

I am pondering often just how to insert a snarl into an upcoming court hearing. Said snarl would be to the effect that, 'Your Honor, the HOA and the HOA's attorney is using the Court, and so the taxpayers' money, to harass. Yes, flat-out harass, your Honor, without evidence to justify its suit. I do not understand how the attorney can call himself a member of the bar. [I got the latter from a judge in one of the Trump lawsuits.] This litigation is not about dotting i's, your Honor. The HOA flatly ignored the three pages of the Rules which say how the Rules are to be enforced. If Your Honor does not order that the HOA actually follow its own Rules and Regulations, then the HOA will continue to burden the courts with this frivolous litigation, and so the cost to both taxpayers and the HOA's membership will continue to escalate.'

I have read enough about CathyA3's HOA attorney (and KerryL1's for that matter) to know they would never pull the stunt being pulled where I am. The da--ed attorney where I am has figured out the Board is dumb and the HOA is a cash cow.

I do not want to hijack Melissa's interesting thread.

Go 'Tide.