Mandatory Legal Review of (pretty old) CCRs?

I'm member and Board member of a small (27 lots) HOA/PUD in Oregon. Our CCRs were crafted in 1990. A handful of amendments were filed by previous boards along the way. No exhaustive legal review of the docs has been done since, even though some OR statutes have changed.

Of course nobody wants to invest the legal fees to have a thorough review, or update the CCRs. The motto is why fix it if it ain't broke. My question is: Are we required by law to update our CCRs when laws change? Does anyone know a firm in OR who'd review our docs just for basic compliance without charging an arm and a leg?

Thanks! Gabriele

Gabriele,

As Roger stated, there is no need to update your gov. docs. to correspond with state law. In some states the legislature is very active in passing HOA legislation almost every year which would make it rather difficult to update the assn gov. docs each time a new law is passed. The board members should always be aware of existing state laws, especially those which might have different requirements than the gov. docs. In most instances the state law will trump the assn bylaws or CCRs -- it depends upon how the statute is worded. Actually it would be a good idea for the secretary to maintain a file of all the HOA statutes and also the federal statutes the assn should be aware of.

I would be sure that all your documents DO state that, as an HOA of your particular state, you do follow all those state laws and statutes governing HOAs. (It's pretty boilerplate verbiage and is usually found in the first paragraph of your Articles or Bylaws.)

CONFLICT (between the two) is what you have to really look for. I have found that MOST of the changes in the Condo laws are just more detailed and technical.