GOVERNING DOCUMENTS
ADAMS | STIRLING offers a complete document amendment and restatement program. Governing documents are the heart of any community association. If they are not properly written, your association can be exposed to potential liability and needless legal expenses.
If your documents pre-date laws addressing important topics such as assessment collection, election rules, document disclosures and water damage claims, you need to update your documents. Some reasons for restating your documents:
- Current Laws. In 1986, the Davis-Stirling Act went into effect. On January 1, 2014, a revised and Restated Act replaced the original Act, putting governing documents throughout the state out of sync with the law in areas such as the Open Meeting Act, electric vehicle charging stations, pets, and rentals, to name a few.
- Maintenance Obligations. Older documents are often ambiguous when it comes to maintenance responsibilities. Developers are known for using boilerplate documents that often mention components that do not even exist within the development. Failure to properly define duties leads conflict, insurance disputes and litigation.
- Elections. Changes in the law have dramatically affected how elections are handled and ethics issues for directors. Older bylaws fail to have adequate qualifications for the election of directors, have void nominations procedures, make no provision for secret elections, and fail to address the selection independent inspectors of election. Associations need to adopt modern election rules and amend their bylaws to bring them current with the law.
- Pet Restrictions. Pet restrictions can be relaxed or strengthened depending on the needs of the association. Condominium associations, in particular, may wish to restrict the number, weight and breed of dogs.
