Cohousing-L Mailing List: re: removing members

[Denise Meier (dmmj]

On Fri, 15 Jan 1999, Stephanie Fassnacht wrote:

> Wow, not much response on this issue.  I am assuming that it is
> because this subject is as unpleasant to everyone else as it
> has been for us.  

I sort of assumed you were talking about removing a member in the
development period. I believe our Limited Liability Company Operating
Agreement does have some provision for that. Once you've built and sold 
the houses, under the legal structure most US communities have used, I
think you are stuck. You cannot force someone to sell their property
and leave the community.

Certainly there are non-legal ways of addressing this issue, but
spending a lot of time thinking them up ahead of time seems like a
waste of time.

Years and years ago I bought a house with 4 other people in Oakland,
California. We spent hours on drafting a legal agreement, and often we
would go off some long long tangent like "well, if this happened, and then
one of us refused to do this, and then we wanted to do that", and then
someone would say "Hold it - it's turning into another 'asshole' clause" -
meaning we trusted each other not to act like complete creeps, and we
didn't need to write something down for each possible type of creepiness
one might assume.

Hence the preventative ideas of self-selection, good communication,
group-building, etc.


Denise Meier
Two Acre Wood
Sebastopol, Sonoma County
Northern California