Alabama HOA Director Qualifications

1. Overview: Who can serve on an HOA board in Alabama

Start with the basic fact: Alabama does not set director qualifications through a single statutory checklist. The recorded declaration or CC&Rs and the bylaws do most of the work — they fix who is eligible, how large the board runs, and how long a term lasts. The corporate baselines come from the Alabama Nonprofit Corporation Law, and for condominiums, the Alabama Uniform Condominium Act of 1991 adds statutory backstops that govern how board control passes from the declarant to the owners.¹

Consider the 1991 Act itself. It lives at Ala. Code § 35-8A-101 et seq., it draws on the 1980 Uniform Condominium Act rather than UCIOA, and it reaches condominiums created after January 1, 1991. Its board provisions handle declarant control, the executive board’s powers, the standard of care board members owe, and the owners’ right to remove a director — not a roster of qualifications.^{1, 2} The framework then splits by community type. Condominiums created before January 1, 1991 stay under the older Condominium Ownership Act. Planned communities pull their rules from the recorded documents and the corporate code, and the thin Alabama Homeowners’ Association Act reaches mainly associations formed on or after January 1, 2016.^{3, 4, 5}

Notice what Alabama leaves out. It imposes no statutory director certification or education requirement, no statutory term limit, and no automatic disqualification of owners who fall behind on assessments or of people with criminal histories. That sets it sharply apart from heavy-touch states such as Florida.^{1, 6} The sections below identify which layer controls and what each one actually says.

2. Where director qualifications come from

2A. What the condominium statutes do and do not govern

The Alabama Uniform Condominium Act of 1991 (Ala. Code § 35-8A-101 et seq.) governs condominiums created after January 1, 1991.^{2, 3} Its board provisions sit in the management article, principally at Ala. Code § 35-8A-303 (“Board members and officers”), which derives from Section 3-103 of the uniform act.¹ That section does four things: it manages the handoff from declarant control to owner-elected control, it gives the executive board authority to act for the association, it sets the standard of care board members owe, and it secures the owners’ right to remove directors.¹ Section 35-8A-303(a) fixes the standard of care — board members the declarant appoints must act as fiduciaries, while those the owners elect must exercise ordinary and reasonable care.¹

What the 1991 Act leaves out matters as much as what it includes. It carries no qualification checklist, no mandatory certification or education, no statutory term limit, and no automatic disqualification of delinquent owners or of people convicted of crimes. Its non-variable provisions reach only what the chapter expressly identifies, because Ala. Code § 35-8A-104 says the parties may not vary the Act by agreement except where the chapter expressly allows it.⁷ Condominiums created before January 1, 1991 stay under the predecessor Condominium Ownership Act (Ala. Code § 35-8-1 et seq.), first enacted in 1964, and its board framework is thinner still: Section 35-8-9 hands administration to the association acting through its officers or governing board, but it prescribes no director qualifications.⁴

2B. Planned communities and the corporate-law layer

Planned communities — the non-condominium associations — have no detailed director-qualification statute at all. The Alabama Homeowners’ Association Act (Ala. Code § 35-20-1 et seq.), effective January 1, 2016, reaches developments under a declaration recorded on or after that date and older associations that elect into it, but it sets no director eligibility criteria. It requires organization as a nonprofit corporation and routes governance to the corporate code and the governing documents.^{5, 8} Most Alabama associations of either type incorporate under the Alabama Nonprofit Corporation Law (Ala. Code § 10A-3-1.01 et seq.). Its director section, Ala. Code § 10A-3-2.09, supplies the corporate baselines: the board may not run smaller than one director (down from a prior three-director floor, cut by Act 2021-299, § 5), with the actual number set by the certificate of formation or bylaws; directors may be split into classes with non-uniform terms; and a director may be removed under any procedure the certificate of formation provides.⁹ Title 10A is corporate-formality scaffolding, not an HOA-specific qualification statute. It tells an association how to structure a board, not who may sit on one.

2C. The declaration, CC&Rs, and bylaws as the operative source

The recorded declaration or CC&Rs and the bylaws are where the actual qualification rules live for any given community. Member-only requirements, good-standing conditions, residency or age floors, staggered terms — these are documentary choices, not statutory commands.

The order of precedence differs by community type. For condominiums under the 1991 Act, the hierarchy runs from the Act’s non-variable provisions, then the Act’s default rules as the declaration and bylaws modify them, then unmodified Act defaults, then Title 10A corporate defaults, then board-adopted rules.^{1, 7} For planned communities, where no condominium-style statute applies, the hierarchy runs from the CC&Rs and bylaws, then Title 10A corporate defaults, then board rules.^{8, 9} Operationally, a manager has to identify the community type first, then read the governing documents against the applicable backstops. The phrase “Alabama law” alone does not answer a director-eligibility question.

3. Director eligibility, disqualification, and tenure rules

3A. Eligibility to serve

Whether a director must be a unit owner or member is, in Alabama, almost always a documentary question. Neither the 1991 Act nor Title 10A requires a director to own a unit or hold membership; Ala. Code § 10A-3-2.09 leaves qualifications to the certificate of formation and bylaws.⁹ A community that wants member-only directors has to say so in its documents. The same goes for residency and age conditions: Alabama imposes none by statute, so any such requirement comes from the declaration or bylaws (source layer: governing documents; applies to all community types).

Good-standing or current-on-assessments conditions work the same way in Alabama — documentary, not statutory. Where the governing documents say nothing, an owner who is behind on assessments is not statutorily barred from serving (source layer: governing documents; applies to all community types). Co-owners, spouses, trustees, and entity representatives — the natural person an LLC or trust designates — may serve where the documents permit. Because Title 10A does not require directors to be natural-person owners, an entity owner can generally name an individual to serve unless the documents restrict it.⁹

3B. Disqualification and removal

Assessment delinquency does not disqualify a candidate or a sitting director under Alabama statute. Any disqualification on that ground has to come from a CC&R or bylaw provision (source layer: governing documents; applies to all community types). This is the single most common point of Florida contamination, and as applied to Alabama it is simply wrong. Criminal history works the same way: no Alabama statute disqualifies a person from board service over a felony or other conviction, so any such bar is documentary (source layer: governing documents). Conflict-of-interest limits on service likewise come from the documents and from general fiduciary principles, not from a dedicated statute.

Owner-initiated removal is the one removal mechanism Alabama addresses by statute for condominiums. Under Ala. Code § 35-8A-303(g), the unit owners, by a two-thirds vote of all persons present and entitled to vote at a meeting where a quorum is present, may remove any board member with or without cause — except a member the declarant appointed (source layer: 1991 Act; applies to post-1991 condominiums).¹ For corporations generally, including planned-community associations and pre-1991 condominiums organized as nonprofits, Ala. Code § 10A-3-2.09(d) provides that a director may be removed under any procedure the certificate of formation sets, which pushes the mechanics back to the documents (source layer: Title 10A plus governing documents).⁹ The voting mechanics of any recall — notice, quorum, and ballots — are a board-elections question, taken up separately.

3C. Board composition and terms

Ala. Code § 10A-3-2.09(a) sets the minimum number of directors for an incorporated association at not fewer than one, with the actual number fixed by the certificate of formation or bylaws (source layer: Title 10A as modified by governing documents; applies to all incorporated associations).⁹ For post-1991 condominiums, the 1991 Act adds a backstop: once any period of declarant control ends, the owners must elect a board of at least three members, a majority of them unit owners other than the declarant.¹ There is no statutory maximum board size and no statutory term limit; term length, staggering, and any term cap come from the governing documents, and Title 10A expressly allows classes of directors with non-uniform terms (source layer: governing documents, with Title 10A authorization).⁹

For condominiums, Ala. Code § 35-8A-303(d) and (e) govern declarant-appointed seats versus owner-elected seats. The declaration may provide for a period of declarant control, but that period ends no later than the earliest of three triggers: 60 days after 75 percent of the units that may be created are conveyed to non-declarant owners; two years after all declarants stop offering units for sale in the ordinary course of business; or two years after anyone last exercised a development right to add new units.¹ The Act also steps owners onto the board before that endpoint: within 90 days after 25 percent of the units are conveyed to non-declarant owners, owners other than the declarant must elect at least one member and at least 25 percent of the board, rising to at least one-third once 50 percent are conveyed (source layer: 1991 Act; applies to post-1991 condominiums).¹ Planned communities run a parallel but document-driven version: Ala. Code § 35-20-7 lets the declaration provide a period of declarant control over the election of directors, without the statutory step-down triggers the condominium Act imposes (source layer: HOA Act plus governing documents).¹⁰

3D. Onboarding and ongoing qualification duties

Alabama requires no director certification, no education course, and no post-election written attestation. Nothing in the 1991 Act, the Condominium Ownership Act, the Homeowners’ Association Act, or Title 10A conditions a director’s service on completing training. Compare Florida directly. There, as amended effective July 1, 2024, each newly elected or appointed residential condominium director must, within 90 days, hand the association secretary both a written certification and an educational certificate from a division-approved course of at least four hours, and a director who misses the deadline “is suspended from service on the board until he or she complies.”^{1, 6} In Alabama, conflict-of-interest disclosure answers to general fiduciary duty and the governing documents, not to a dedicated condominium statute.

The operative ongoing duty is the standard of care. For post-1991 condominiums, Ala. Code § 35-8A-303(a) sets two tiers: declarant-appointed board members owe the non-declarant owners the care of fiduciaries, while owner-elected members owe ordinary and reasonable care (source layer: 1991 Act).¹ For associations incorporated as nonprofits, including planned communities, the parallel fiduciary baseline flows from the Alabama Nonprofit Corporation Law and the general corporate-law principles that supplement it (source layer: Title 10A).⁹

4. Recent legislative and judicial activity

4A. Recent bills

Alabama’s recent activity on this front is a single bill, and it did not survive the session.

No other bill in the 2025 or 2026 Regular Sessions amended the 1991 Act, the Condominium Ownership Act, or Title 10A, as applied to associations, on director qualifications, board composition, or removal.

4B. Recent appellate rulings

4C. Active legislative debates

The failed SB344 (2024) shows a continuing appetite to extend the Homeowners’ Association Act to all planned communities and to tighten declarant control of boards. For now, though, no comprehensive planned-community statute or director-qualification mandate is moving forward.¹¹

5. National positioning and related coverage

Alabama is a light-touch, split-structure state for director qualifications. The condominium statute leaves eligibility, terms, and disqualification to the governing documents and the corporate code, and addresses only declarant-control transition, the standard of care, and owner removal rights. Planned communities have only the thin Homeowners’ Association Act, which sets no director criteria at all. Florida runs the other way: statute there requires both director certification and an approved education course, caps consecutive service at four two-year terms absent a two-thirds owner vote, and provides that an owner delinquent on assessments “is not eligible for board membership.” California’s Davis-Stirling Act, in turn, sets statutory candidate-eligibility rules.^{6, 14} For a multi-state operator, the practical lesson is direct: a manager used to Florida’s statutory director screens will find none of them in Alabama statute, and must read each community’s governing documents instead. Apart from the condominium standard-of-care provision and the declarant-control transition rules, the qualification question in Alabama stays documentary and corporate.

HOA Weekly refreshes its Alabama director-qualifications coverage each quarter, as the legislature and the courts act. Federal frameworks rarely dictate director qualifications, but Alabama associations still answer to federal law — the Fair Housing Act, the Americans with Disabilities Act, the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act, the Servicemembers Civil Relief Act, and the OTARD rule — in their broader operations.

Footnotes

1. Ala. Code § 35-8A-303 (Board members and officers) ↩
2. Ala. Code § 35-8A-101 (Alabama Uniform Condominium Act of 1991, short title) ↩
3. Ala. Code § 35-8A-102 (Applicability; condominiums created after January 1, 1991) ↩
4. Ala. Code § 35-8-9 (Condominium Ownership Act; duties of association) ↩
5. Ala. Code § 35-20-5 (Alabama Homeowners’ Association Act; organization as nonprofit corporation) ↩
6. Fla. Stat. § 718.112(2)(d) (director eligibility, certification and education, term limits) ↩
7. Ala. Code § 35-8A-104 (Variation by agreement) ↩
8. Ala. Code § 35-20-4 (Construction and administration; nonprofit corporation law) ↩
9. Ala. Code § 10A-3-2.09 (Number and election of directors; terms; removal; amended by Act 2021-299, § 5) ↩
10. Ala. Code § 35-20-7 (Election of board; declarant control) ↩
11. Alabama SB344 (2024 Regular Session), as introduced ↩
12. Ex parte Caribe Resort Condominium Association Board of Directors, SC-2023-0624 and SC-2024-0762 (Ala. Dec. 13, 2024) ↩
13. Ala. Code § 10A-3-2.44 (Representative actions by members) ↩
14. Cal. Civ. Code § 5105 (candidate qualifications) ↩