Legal Edition: The weather is good and neighbors are out and about. In this season of blockbuster movies what better way to entertain a community association than with a blowout soiree. From pool parties to July 4th cookouts, neighborhood events are a great way to foster community spirit, friendships and interest.

From the Capulets and Montagues to the Hatfields and McCoys, disputes between neighbors is a time-honored tradition. The plea to the board is always the same: the Association must take action against my neighbor for all the awful things they are doing. The problem is that the plea often comes from both sides in the dispute and, equally as often,

Compromise Your Way Through Conflict In this day and age, it can seem like compromise is a dirty word indicating a failure to stand by one’s position. In the community association context, however, compromise is often the key difference between warring neighbors and a peaceful neighborhood.

Striking a Balance with Use Restriction Enforcement: When Niccolo Machiavelli posed his famous question in the 16th century he was considering leadership in the often-bloody struggles of Renaissance Italy. Anyone dealing with a homeowner’s unapproved chain-link fence or bright pink house knows that community association leadership is not as far removed from that distant past as we sometimes like to

Anyone who’s lived in or worked with a community association knows that the end of the calendar year usually brings a new board. The annual meeting is almost always the setting for a vote on new directors. This vote typically takes place just before the winter holidays set in with the new board taking the reins of authority sometime in

Just as you can’t judge a book by a cover, you can’t judge a community by the way it looks on the outside. If you are looking at the exteriors in a development and you don’t know whether it is a townhome or a condominium community, don’t worry, you are not alone!! From the exterior, condominium and townhome communities can

When do Declarant Rights Terminate? Eight years ago, Mr. and Mrs. Smith moved into what was planned to be an upscale community containing one hundred single family detached homes with a mandatory membership homeowners association subject to a declaration of restrictive covenants. Since then, the original declarant defaulted on its loan and the unsold property all went back to the

As a retired Magistrate Court Judge (DeKalb County), I was happy to be asked to write an article about the “Pros and Cons” of filing collection cases in Magistrate Court! A little background on Magistrate Courts in general: The first Magistrate Court was created in Georgia in 1961 as a “small claims court” intended for citizens to settle their disputes