Condo Media - December 2016 - 33

owners could do almost anything they
wanted." Most omissions involve issues
that weren't on the radar screen, or simply didn't exist, when the documents
were drafted. E-mail is an obvious
example. Carleton says Maine condominium documents often mandate
the use of U.S. mail, "or, even worse"
certified mail, return receipt requested,
for all notices. The state condominium
statute allows e-mail notifications, and
he advises associations to amend their
documents to take advantage of that
flexibility.
To clarify ambiguous language.
Ambiguities can be as problematic as
oversights. The documents for an association Goodman represented said
owners could have air conditioning
equipment either in their own units or
in the common area adjacent to them.
That language referred to adjacent
closets in which the condensers were
located. But when one owner obtained

a larger condenser that didn't fit in the
closet, he interpreted the provision
literally and installed the equipment
on the lawn outside his unit, arguing
that it met the definition of "adjacent"
common area. "We eventually won that
case," Goodman says, but it illustrates
the need for clarity and precision in describing what owners can do and where
they can do it.
One of Daddario's pet peeves, and
a favorite candidate for revision, is
language defining the maintenance
responsibilities of owners and the
association. "Sometimes the divisions
are clear," he says, "but sometimes
you can't tell what [the document's
drafters] were thinking." It isn't uncommon for documents to divide the
responsibility for doors and windows
-assigning the interior to unit owners
and the exterior to the association.
"If the association says the windows
need to be replaced and the owner
says, 'they look fine to me,' you have a

stalemate," Daddario says. "Doors and
windows need to belong to one or the
other, but not to both."
Carleton says he's been getting more
inquiries from condominium boards
that want to revise their documents
not just to update them, but to make
them "more understandable." Their
documents may have been amended
several times already, don't have a table
of contents and are written in "dense
legalese" that makes them difficult
to read. Some boards are requesting
"complete rewrites" to make their
documents more user-friendly, even
though, Carleton says, that effort is time
consuming, labor-intensive, "and can be
quite expensive."

n NENA GROSKIND IS PRESIDENT
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EDITORIAL CONTENT FOR
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December 2016

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Condo Media - December 2016

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