Walk away from condo-repercussions?

You need to talk to your neighbors. I bet there are others who are in the same boat. Your "solution" is a lot like suicide - a permanent solution to a temporary problem.

Walking away has the potential to damage your credit for a long time making it difficult or impossible to get a loan in the near future. Even if your mortgage is paid off the association could attempt to collect from you and when that fails turn you over to collections. Being sent to collections and/or having civil judgments against you will hurt your credit big time.

With that being said, if things are as bad as they sound, the chances of the association having money to pay their lawyer bills to pursue everyone else isn't too great.

Definitely retain the services of a lawyer for yourself. If the other neighbors aren't paying up and you have been you might be in a better position than them.

Melissa:

When you band together with your neighbors to talk to an attorney I would probably only band with other owners who have been paying the assessments due to date and thus are in good standing. Those who are not paying have brought some other issues on themselves which will complicate any advice the lawyer is able to provide.

Since you rent your unit if you currently have tenants you'll want to ask the lawyer about that specifically. The last thing you need is for them to turn around and sue you for breach of contract when the association issue is finally resolved (particularly if it results in dissolution).

I don't envy you one bit but wish you the best of luck!!

You see the term fiduciary duty a lot with respect to associations and I think it's often misunderstood.

The board's duty is to the association (a distinct, legal entity) and maintaining it in trust for the collective benefit of the owners. What that means is that their duty is to keep the association afloat and maintain the property so that it will continue in existence. Unless an association's documents provide that it will cease to exist at some point, the presumption is that it will continue indefinitely. As such the board is obligated to act with that objective in mind. I underlined the word collectively because the responsibility is to the association as a whole, not any one owner or even a group of them. I also underlined in trust because that's the relationship between the association and its members (owners). It's kind of like if someone leaves a million dollars to you in a trust you don't get to decide how/when the money is given to you. Those decisions are made by a trustee designated under the terms of the trust agreement.

The fact that half the owners are refusing to pay does not negate the validity of the assessment. It just means they're delinquents that the board is obligated to pursue. If the board's responsibility was anything other than to the association, why even have a board? Just have people pay for causes they support and not pay for those they don't. Obviously that would never work, hence the use of the Association <-> Board <-> Owner structure we see today.

Your situation might have nuances such as a failure to properly budget reserves as required by law or willful indifference to the deterioration of whatever is causing the current assessment. Those would be civil actions separate from the assessment itself. It doesn't change the fact that the present board is obligated to fix the problem so that the association can continue to exist.