Condo Association Management Blog

You have so much at stake. If you had a condo attorney you would not be asking - I consider you invest in one. The assoc will reimburse you (11/12). Do you have a regulatory agency in your state for condos? They might give you some time but you are a heck of a long way down the road to be asking for advice.

What state do you live in? 
 
I would like to help you with your plight but I find your writing hard to comprehend. You said 2 owners are running the place and collecting fee's and there are 3 owners but one owners seems to be collecting fee's and he is using his personal account to collect fee's and he wants to only have an owner become treasure in name only? What person would not do the work but sign his name to checks and bills? What do the other people in your complex say? 
 
I can see why you lost in court. 
Maybe its me but I feel you need to rewrite your story it so it makes more sense.  
 
 
 
 
 

In what state is your condo located. Do you have a copy of your condo association bylaws?? 
 
 
 
Answer and I'll try to help you.

I have questions about this: You stated you have bylaws, what do they say about officers and their responsibilities? Does the HOA have an attorney? How are the fees divided amount the other owners? Does anyone see invoices before owners are charged? Does your HOA have an annual budget?  
 
What state do you live in? Does your state have laws governing HOA's?

Move out. You can;t win. You don;t have the money for proper representation. Suck it up, let it go.,

First thing you all must do is hire an auditor ASAP. In no way should association funds be co-mingled w/personal funds. Sounds like a criminal matter to me

You all assume "linking" the corporation's account means funds can be transferred into or out of; however, some banks charge for certain features if they have those features on their own, but if they are linked to a personal, they are free. For instance, being able to access online copies, being able to view all accounts (operating or reserves, special assessment, and other accounts), banks charge and extra fee (account analysis) although you don't require analysis, you just want to be able to look at your accounts. 
 
Request to see documents, offer a time to set the appointment, send the request certified, and then follow up to inspect documents.  
 
But how much time do you really want to spend, and how much do you expect to get from your efforts?

Sorry it took so long to reply to everyone. I couldn't find my blog and then all of a sudden it popped up in my email. 
 
I live in Mass. I don't know about a regulatory agency. The police in my town know about everything going on here. They said to contact the attourney general. I did this and got a letter back telling me to contact the town police.  
 
I have the bylaws and master deed for the property. They say the account isn't supposed to be 'linked' to any other accounts and Any owner at any time can cause an audit of the books.  
 
The treasurer called a meeting a little more than two years ago. He said he didn't want to be treasurer, he wanted to be president for the association. A second owner, who is now secretary, said she would be secretary at this meeting. A third owner stepped up at this meeting and said, I'll be treasurer. The six owners at the meeting voted for the three of them to take whichever positions they wanted. After the meeting, the president said he needed time to get the papers together to turn them over to the new treasurer. Any time papers needed to be signed by the association treasurer,(6D reports,papers at the bank, etc.), the President would knock on the treasures door and take him where he needed to go to sign these papers. This went on for about 6 months. The new treasurer was never given any paperwork from the new president. The owner that was supposed to be tresurer finally said, I want the paperwork for the association or i'm not signing any more papers as treasurer. The association president told him 'I was just looking for someone to have the label and sign papers as treasurer, I wasn't looking for someone to take over the duties, and the association checking account is linked to my personal account'.  
 
The association does not have an attourney, if they did, wouldn't it be for the president to collect owed condo fees?  
 
The fees are dependant on the size of your condo, the condos are not all the same size.  
 
No one sees bills, budgets or anything. There are no meetings called and there are no votes on anything. If anyone asks the president about proof of what he pays in bills, he just says, 'Sue me' or 'I haven't kept track of anything i am doing, there is no paper work'.  
 
At the meeting about two years ago the president said he set up a site on the internet where he enters all the condo fee information for each unit. You can go to this site to view what you owe in condo fees and pay your condo fees. Each owner has a screenname and password that was set by the president. I need these to view my condo fees. He wouldn't give me the screen name or password so I wasn't able to view what I was being charged, but finally he started sending me links directly to the site. This was where I discovered he was charging me document preparation fees, administrative fees, certified letter fees, mail fees, outside water use fees. I refused to pay any fees other than my normal condo fee. I held my condo fee till he took me to court. Everything was discused in court. He was told he couldn't charge me any of these fees and there was a judgement for what I owed in current condo fees deducting all the odd fees. I paid the judgement. The president deducted what I paid from HIS balance and instead of my condo fees being paid in full, I had a balance of over $2000.00 that was still owed to the association. When I went back on the internet into his condo fee site, I saw what he did and again held my condo fees. He took me to court a few months later for the $2000.00 I supposedly owed from a year before, not my current condo fees.In court he said he and the secretary had a 'private' meeting and decided to raise the condo fees and that was why I owe so much money to the association. Again he was told he couldn't charge me these fees, but because I owed current condo fees, that was what the judgement was for. I paid my condo fees, which should have paid them in full, but again, he deducted what I paid from HIS balance and leaving me a total due of over $3000.00. I found this out by going onto his condo fee site. Again I held my fees. He took me to court a third time, but so it couldn't be said that I owed current condo fees, I paid my fees in full before court. In court the president said the money I just paid went to other money I owed the association. He and the secretary said they were calling meetings and no one would show up, so they had to decide for themselves to raise the condo fees. I told the mediator that there were no meetings, that the two of them were making there own decisions, that they were charging me all those odd fees. They argued with me and insisted that they call meetings all the time and no one shows up. That is why I lost in court. I have appealed the court decision and on October 26th it will go in front of a jury. I can't afford a lawyer, so I have to be my own lawyer. 
 
The other owners are not doing anything about this. We were all told if we didn't pay the increase and extra fees, we would be pulled into court and sued. The other owners don't want to be pulled into court. 
 
Besides me, there was 1 other owner fighting this, but he is tired of it and is planning to walk away from his condo in the near future.I would walk away, if I could afford it. There are 4 people here, me , my husband, and my two kids. I am the only person working and that is part time. I am already $450.00 short for my bills each month, so where am I going to go? My credit is shot because I went behind on some bills.  
 
As for the association reimbursing me for attourney fees,that will never happen. The association doesn't reimburse anyone for anything.  
 
I have allready spoke with a lawyer and he wanted %2500.00 for a deposit and said it would cost me about $10,000.00 to go to court with all of this. The condo fee issue is only the beginning, there are other issues as well.  
 
I have sent 3 certified letters in the last two years demanding an audit be done of the books. After the first letter, I recieved nothing. I knocked on the presidents door and demanded he give me paperwork. He laughed at me and said 'sue me' and shut the door in my face. After the second letter I received nothing and knocked on his door and got the same result as the first time. After the third letter, I talked that 1 owner that was fighting all of this too,into hounding him too. Finally, I got a hand made bankstatement printed from the internet. There is no beginning balance, no running balance and no ending balance. It has just supposedly what he has paid in bills for about nine months and a withdrawal that the secretary made for about $98.00.  
 
As for the checking being linked to a personal account, I ran the association for five years and I never had the association checking account linked to anything. The bank wouldn't allow it because it was the associations money, yet he is allowed to link it to his personal checking, view it online and make transactions over the internet with it?  
 
As long as I kept a certain balance the account was free. Every time he made some kind of payment the account was charged $5.00 for the transaction. The statement didn't have transaction numbers, just what he wrote in for memos.  
 
I wrote checks for the bills.That didn't cost anything. 
 
How much time do I really want to spend on this? I'm not sure. I am getting real sick of it. What I expect is that I won't have to pay all those odd fees to the association. He deducts those first and takes me to court for the normal fees from years ago and, so far he has gotten away with it. The association secretary has even tried to scare me into paying these fees. "keep your month shut and pay your bills" is what she sent me in an email about a week ago.

I would contact a lawyer specializing in property law. Please feel free to contact me at (617) 927-6926 I can put you in contact with the proper property law consulting firm. I've been in the business for over 10 years as a regional property manager, and we've encountered this quite a bit in the past few years. Associations that are self run usually run into issues that include conflict of interest, money laundering, etc.

Thank you for the advice Christopher, but I can't afford a lawyer right now.