Cohousing-L Mailing List: Legally enforceable documents [was: what info do new/...

[Fred H Olson (fholson]

The author of the message below did not wish to his/her community
identified so it was posted by Fred the Cohousing-L list manager
<fholson [at] cohousing.org>
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On Wed, 10 Oct 2007 Mac Thomson <mac [at] heartwoodcohousing.com> with
Subject: Re: [C-L]_ what info do new/prospective owners need? wrote:

> Maybe we're naive, but we don't put hardly any energy into what's
> legally enforceable in our CC&R's.  I suppose that could come back
> and bite us in the butt some day.  Where we do put a LOT of energy is
> in trying to nurture a close knit community supported by our
> agreements, which are really only enforceable by our mutual goodwill.
...

Yes, I think you're being naive.  It just takes one member, who happily went
through all the pre-purchase screening and familiarization and was a great
neighbor at the beginning, but later became embittered for some reason, to cause
a lot of distress in a community.

Such a situation exposes all of your community's legal and procedural
weaknesses.  If the disaffected member wants to use legalities to his or her
advantage, you're likely to wish that your community had protected its interests
better from the git-go.

My community went through such a situation and discovered that we had been naive
and had relied too much on the assumption of perpetual mutual good will.  Our
angry member announced that, the way our ByLaws and CC&R's are written, we can't
legally enforce payment of monthly homeowner dues (and stopped paying them) and
that our norms and agreements also have no legal basis (and stopped following
them).  We wish we had built stronger legal protections into our founding
documents back when the community was still a wonderful ideal for future living.

If your members are currently living together in peace and harmony, this would
be a great time to re-examine your By-Laws and CC&R's with a view to giving
yourselves legal protections for basic issues like the penalty for nonpayment of
dues, what makes the community's decisions legally binding, etc., if those are
not currently in place.  You don't want to be trying to make those changes at a
time when a member is feeling highly aggrieved and has taken a legalistic and
non-negotiating stance, and is challenging the community in fundamental ways.