Alabama HOA Governing Statute
1. Overview — How HOAs are governed in Alabama
Alabama governs its community associations with three separate statutes, not one. The state has a current condominium law, an older condominium law that still controls the buildings it was written for, and — despite a common misconception — a dedicated statute for planned-community homeowners' associations. That HOA statute is real, though it runs far thinner than the comprehensive codes you find in California, Florida, or Texas.
The main condominium law is the Alabama Uniform Condominium Act of 1991, Ala. Code § 35-8A-101 et seq. The Legislature passed it as Act 90-551, and it governs every condominium created on or after January 1, 1991.1 Condominiums built before that date stay under the older Alabama Condominium Ownership Act, Ala. Code § 35-8-1 et seq., which lawmakers first enacted in 1964 and overhauled in 1973. A short list of "reach-back" sections in § 35-8A-102 reaches those older buildings anyway.2
Planned-community HOAs created on or after January 1, 2016 answer to the Alabama Homeowners' Association Act, Ala. Code § 35-20-1 et seq.3 Older associations can opt in if a majority of members vote to. Underneath all of this sits Title 10A, the Alabama Business and Nonprofit Entity Code, which sets the board duties, member meetings, and dissolution rules for every association, condominium or not.
Alabama has not adopted UCIOA, the Uniform Common Interest Ownership Act. Chapter 8A is the older 1980 Uniform Condominium Act, and it covers condominiums only. Chapter 20 is a homegrown Alabama statute that runs alongside it without incorporating UCIOA. That puts Alabama in the middle: it is neither a comprehensive-statute state like California, Florida, or Texas, nor a bare CC&R state like Mississippi or Arkansas. The recorded declaration still does most of the day-to-day work, but a thin statutory floor now exists for condominiums and for planned communities formed after 2015. The sections below walk through each statute, the obligations it creates, and what the Legislature and the courts have done lately.
2. The statutory framework
Start with the Alabama Uniform Condominium Act of 1991. It runs from Ala. Code § 35-8A-101 through § 35-8A-417, and the Legislature enacted it as Act 90-551.1 The short-title section says the chapter "shall be known and may be cited as the 'Alabama Uniform Condominium Act of 1991.'"4 By its own terms, it "applies to all condominiums created within this state after January 1, 1991."2 Lawmakers later reworked it through Act 2018-403, which updated the association's powers (§ 35-8A-302), assessment liens (§ 35-8A-316), records (§ 35-8A-318), insurance (§ 35-8A-313), termination (§ 35-8A-218), and the offering-statement and cancellation rules (§ 35-8A-408), among others.5
Chapter 8A draws on the 1980 Uniform Condominium Act, the act that came before UCIOA — and it reaches condominiums only. The chapter splits into four articles: Article 1 sets out general provisions and definitions; Article 2 covers creating, altering, and terminating condominiums; Article 3 handles management, including the association's powers, board fiduciary duties, meetings, budgets, assessments, and liens; and Article 4 protects condominium purchasers through the offering-statement regime and a seven-day right to cancel at § 35-8A-408.6
The definitions in § 35-8A-103 include "condominium," "declaration," "association," "unit owner," "common elements," "limited common elements," and "master association."7 Alabama also departs from the model act in a few telling ways. It lets condominium associations organize as either for-profit or nonprofit corporations under § 35-8A-301 — a choice that, as the Caribe Resort litigation later showed, changes who can bring a derivative suit. It caps the resale-certificate fee at twenty-five dollars under § 35-8A-316(h). And § 35-8A-102(d) carves out small condominiums of no more than four units that carry no development rights, letting them elect either Chapter 8A or the older Chapter 8.
Condominiums created before January 1, 1991 stay mostly under the Alabama Condominium Ownership Act, Ala. Code § 35-8-1 through § 35-8-22. The Legislature first passed it in 1964 and amended it heavily in 1973.8 It is shorter and less detailed than its successor, covering definitions, applicability, unit ownership, common and limited common elements, the declaration, bylaws, recordation, common expenses, blanket mortgages, termination, and how building and zoning laws apply.
The 1991 Act still reaches back to those older buildings in specific ways. Section 35-8A-102(a) lists the sections that apply to every condominium created before 1991 — for events after that date, and without invalidating existing declarations: § 35-8A-105 (separate titles and taxation), § 35-8A-106 (local ordinances), § 35-8A-107 (eminent domain), § 35-8A-203 (construction and validity of the declaration and bylaws), § 35-8A-204 (description of units), § 35-8A-302(a)(1)–(6) and (11)–(16) (specified association powers), § 35-8A-311 (tort and contract liability), § 35-8A-316 (assessment liens), § 35-8A-318 (association records), § 35-8A-409 (resales), and § 35-8A-417 (substantial completion), with the § 35-8A-103 definitions applying as needed.2
So a manager taking over an older Alabama condominium has to find the declaration's recording date in the county probate records before leaning on any generic "Alabama condo law." Chapter 8 governs most issues, Chapter 8A governs the reach-back list, and any amendment to a pre-1991 declaration "must be adopted in conformity with the procedures and requirements specified by those instruments and by sections 35-8-1 through 35-8-22."2
The planned-community statute, the Alabama Homeowners' Association Act, became law as Act 2015-292. The governor signed it on June 2, 2015, and it took effect January 1, 2016.9 Under § 35-20-3(a), it applies "to all developments subject to a declaration providing for a homeowners' association recorded in the office of the judge of probate ... on or after January 1, 2016, and any association formed prior to that time, provided the association, by a majority of its members, elects to be governed by this chapter."10 It does not reach commercial developments, associations already under Chapter 8 or 8A, real-estate cooperatives, time-shares, or campgrounds.10
Chapter 20 is short — fourteen sections — and it pairs corporate-form requirements with a handful of substantive rules. Section 35-20-5(a) requires every Chapter 20 HOA to "be organized as a nonprofit corporation pursuant to Chapter 3 of Title 10A, and ... governed in all respects as a nonprofit corporation."11 Section 35-20-5(b)(2) makes the association file its certificate of formation, bylaws and other governing documents, the declaration, and a supplemental disclosure form with the Secretary of State.12 Section 35-20-8 puts the declaration on top: "If a conflict exists between the declaration and the governing documents ..., the declaration prevails, except to the extent that the declaration is inconsistent with this chapter."13 Sections 35-20-9 through 35-20-13 then supply election-notice rules (120 days), declarant-turnover duties (90 days after the election), enumerated board powers (suspending rights, levying reasonable fines, asserting liens), an automatic statutory assessment lien, and a records regime that requires production within thirty days of a written request.14
What the chapter leaves out matters as much as what it includes. It does not set a budget-ratification procedure, mandate reserves, impose open-meeting rules, limit architectural review, cap fines, or require pre-suit mediation — all things the comprehensive-statute states regulate directly. Those issues stay with the recorded declaration, the bylaws, and Title 10A's corporate defaults. The hierarchy in any Chapter 20 dispute runs in one direction: state law (Chapter 20 plus Title 10A) over the declaration, the declaration over the bylaws, and the bylaws over board-adopted rules. In practice, the declaration is the rulebook, and Chapter 20 supplies a floor rather than a full code.
3. Compliance obligations created by the statutory framework
Governance obligations
For condominiums built after 1990, § 35-8A-308 requires at least one association meeting a year, with notice sent "not less than 10 nor more than 60 days in advance" stating the time, place, agenda, and the general nature of any proposed amendment to the declaration or bylaws or any budget change.15 Section 35-8A-303 sets the standard of care: directors the declarant appoints must act as "fiduciaries of the unit owners other than the declarant," while elected directors owe "ordinary and reasonable care."16 Section 35-8A-318 tells the association to keep records "sufficiently detailed" to support resale certificates under § 35-8A-409 and to make them "reasonably available for examination by any unit owner" in the county where the condominium sits.17 For pre-1991 condominiums, § 35-8A-318 reaches back through § 35-8A-102.
For planned-community HOAs under Chapter 20, § 35-20-9 makes the board send election notice "within 120 days of the date the members have the right to elect a board"; § 35-20-7 governs election procedures and declarant control; and § 35-20-13 sets the records-production deadline at thirty days from a written request.14 Older planned communities that never opted in fall back on the declaration and on Title 10A's nonprofit defaults, including the duty of care under § 10A-3-2.42 and the member-meeting rules in Chapter 3.
Financial obligations
For condominiums, § 35-8A-315(a) makes the board adopt budgets and levy common-expense assessments. Section 35-8A-303(c) then requires the board, within thirty days of adopting a proposed budget, to send every unit owner a copy and call a ratification meeting between fourteen and thirty days out; the budget passes unless a majority of the owners present vote it down.16 Section 35-8A-316 creates the assessment lien and gives it a six-month "super-priority" over first mortgages for assessments tied to the periodic budget — though the statute expressly strips that super-priority where Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, or Ginnie Mae owns or guarantees the mortgage.18 The Act does not require reserves or audits, but it allows reserves and authorizes audits under the association's powers.
For Chapter 20 HOAs, § 35-20-12 declares a statutory lien for unpaid assessments "[e]xcept as may be otherwise provided in the declaration or the governing documents."14 Chapter 20 sets no super-priority to match § 35-8A-316, and it mandates neither reserves nor audits. Budgets, reserves, and audits run through the declaration, the bylaws, and Title 10A. For planned communities outside Chapter 20, every one of these obligations is either contractual, through the declaration, or corporate, through Title 10A — not statutory.
Disclosure obligations
Condominium disclosure duties sit in Article 4 of Chapter 8A. Sections 35-8A-402 through 35-8A-408 require declarants to hand purchasers a public offering statement, and § 35-8A-408 gives the purchaser seven days from receipt to cancel.19 Section 35-8A-409 requires the association to give a selling owner a resale certificate. These duties apply to condominiums only.
For Chapter 20 HOAs, § 35-20-13 requires the association to produce records and disclosures — current assessments, common areas, budget and reserve information, insurance certificates, loans, officer contacts, the CC&Rs, and pending litigation — to "each member or potential purchaser, upon written request, within a reasonable time not to exceed 30 days from the date of the request."20 The chapter sets up no public-offering-statement regime like § 35-8A-402, so the practical point-of-sale document is the resale package under § 35-20-13 plus whatever the declaration demands. Outside Chapter 20, resale disclosure is purely contractual.
Dispute resolution obligations
For condominiums, § 35-8A-302(a)(11) lets the association charge for late assessment payments and, "after notice and an opportunity to be heard," levy reasonable fines for violations.5 That notice-and-hearing step is statutory for fines. Section 35-8A-302(a)(4) lets the association sue "in its own name on behalf of itself or two or more unit owners on matters affecting the condominium" — the language the Alabama Supreme Court leaned on in Perdido Dunes, below, to confirm that condominium associations need not join individual owners as parties.
For Chapter 20 HOAs, § 35-20-11(a)(1)–(2) lets the board, "to the extent authorized by the declaration and governing documents," suspend members' use rights and impose reasonable fines, carrying through Title 10A's fairness defaults. Chapter 20 requires no pre-suit mediation. Alabama runs no central HOA ombudsman or arbitration system, so most disputes move through the declaration's internal steps and then to circuit court. The Alabama Court of Civil Appeals hears civil appeals where the amount in controversy stays at or below $50,000 under Ala. Code § 12-3-10;21 above that line, the appeal goes to the Alabama Supreme Court.
4. Alabama's recent legislative and judicial activity
Recent bills
Alabama lawmakers have mostly left the HOA statutes alone. The one notable recent effort tried to widen the homeowners' association law to cover older communities, and it stalled in committee.
SB 344 · 2024 Regular Session
SB 344, from Sen. Jay Hovey, would have rewritten parts of Chapter 20. It aimed to extend the statute to every homeowners' association regardless of when it formed — dropping both the January 1, 2016 cutoff and the opt-in requirement for older HOAs. It would also have capped declarant control of the board at "the five years following the declarant's first conveyance of a lot" and set minimum lot-owner board-representation thresholds tied to conveyance milestones. The Senate read it on April 25, 2024, sent it to the County and Municipal Government Committee, and never voted it out before the session adjourned. Alabama bills don't carry over, so it is dead, and no successor has appeared in the 2025 or 2026 Regular Sessions.[22]
| Property managers | Older planned-community HOAs — pre-2016 and non-opt-in — still sit outside Chapter 20; don't assume statutory-floor coverage when you onboard legacy portfolios. |
| HOA board members | The five-year declarant-control cap is not Alabama law; the declaration still sets turnover timing. |
| Community association attorneys | Keep advising that Chapter 20 reaches older HOAs only through a majority member opt-in under § 35-20-3(a). |
| Homeowners | In pre-2016 communities that haven't opted in, statutory rights like records access and election notice don't automatically apply. |
Beyond SB 344, a review of the Alabama Legislative Information System for the 2025 and 2026 Regular Sessions turned up no bills directly amending Title 35, Chapter 8A or Chapter 20.23 The 2018 amendment cycle, Act 2018-403, remains the most recent material change to the condominium framework, and Act 2015-292 is still the original — and so far unamended — text of Chapter 20.
Recent court rulings
Alabama's appellate courts haven't rewritten HOA law from the bench. Two recent rulings do something narrower: they hold associations to their own procedures and to the limits of their authority.
Ex parte Caribe Resort Condominium Association Board of Directors
A plurality of the Alabama Supreme Court (Stewart, J., joined by Parker, C.J., and Mitchell and Cook, JJ.) held that the Alabama Nonprofit Corporation Law does not generally allow derivative actions on behalf of nonprofit corporations, because the Legislature deliberately left out the Model Nonprofit Corporation Act's "Derivative Proceedings" chapter when it adopted the Alabama version. The Court did recognize a narrow exception under Ala. Code § 10A-3-2.44(2), which lets members sue "the officers or directors of the nonprofit corporation for exceeding their authority." Applied to a large Orange Beach condominium organized as a nonprofit, the Court let the owners' derivative claims against the board move forward but ordered the claims against the related Wireman contracting companies dismissed, since § 10A-3-2.44(2) doesn't reach non-officer third parties. Justice Sellers, joined by Justices Wise and Mendheim, dissented in part. Because the main opinion drew only four votes, it is a plurality with limited precedential weight.[24]
| Property managers | Expect more pressure for board-level transparency in nonprofit condo and HOA structures; tighten meeting minutes and contract-approval records. |
| HOA board members | Conduct that arguably exceeds board authority — self-dealing, above-market contracts — now sits squarely inside the § 10A-3-2.44(2) claim; document fair-market checks and conflict disclosures. |
| Community association attorneys | Plead derivative claims under § 10A-3-2.44(2) as "exceeding authority", not generic fiduciary breach, and don't assume the for-profit derivative procedure applies. |
| Homeowners | Owners in nonprofit condos and HOAs keep a route to sue boards for ultra vires conduct, but not the broader for-profit derivative toolkit. |
Phoenix East Association, Inc. v. Perdido Dunes Tower Condominium Association, Inc.
Writing for the Court, Justice Mitchell held that Ala. Code § 35-8A-207(e) does not flatly bar courts from imposing prescriptive easements on condominium common elements; the statute blocks transactions that sever a unit owner's interest in a common element from the interest in the unit, not every encumbrance.[25] Relying on § 35-8A-302(a)(4) — the power to sue "in its own name on behalf of itself or two or more unit owners on matters affecting the condominium" — the Court also confirmed that a condominium association need not join every individual unit owner under Rule 19. The Court applied Alabama's settled twenty-year prescriptive-easement period, restated in Bull v. Salsman, 435 So. 2d 27, 29 (Ala. 1983), which requires use "for a period of twenty years or more, adversely to the owner ..., under claim of right, exclusive, continuous, and uninterrupted, with actual or presumptive knowledge of the owner."[26]
| Property managers | Boundary-line use still runs on Alabama's common-law adverse-possession and prescriptive-easement doctrine; Chapter 8A doesn't shield condominiums from those claims. |
| HOA board members | Document survey lines and known encroachments, and address them inside the twenty-year window for prescriptive easements. |
| Community association attorneys | The association has standing to litigate boundary matters without joining individual owners; § 35-8A-302(a)(4) settles the Rule 19 question. |
| Homeowners | Long-running, open use of a neighbor's adjoining strip can ripen into an easement — condominium status doesn't stop the clock. |
Active legislative debates
No sweeping HOA overhaul is moving through Montgomery right now. The real question is whether the 2024 push to expand Chapter 20 comes back in a later session.
Chapter 20 expansion
No comprehensive Alabama planned-community statute — an Alabama answer to UCIOA or Florida's Chapter 720 — is pending in the 2026 Regular Session. The retroactivity and declarant-control ideas in 2024's SB 344 remain the clearest sign of legislative interest in widening Chapter 20. Whether they return in the 2027 session, and in what shape, is the main thing to watch.
| Property managers | Track the 2027 session before assuming legacy HOAs stay outside Chapter 20. |
| HOA board members | The five-year declarant-control cap could resurface; plan turnover as if it might become law. |
| Community association attorneys | Watch for a reintroduced retroactivity bill that would sweep pre-2016 HOAs into Chapter 20. |
| Homeowners | Statutory rights for older communities hinge on whether the Legislature revisits the 2016 cutoff. |
5. National positioning and related coverage
Alabama lands between two recognizable categories of states. It is not a comprehensive-statute state like California, with its Davis-Stirling Common Interest Development Act; Florida, with Chapter 718 for condominiums and Chapter 720 for planned communities; or Texas, with Property Code Chapter 209. It is also not a UCIOA state — a group the Community Associations Institute counts as nine: Alaska, Colorado, Minnesota, Nevada, and West Virginia under the 1982 version, plus Connecticut, Delaware, Vermont, and Washington under the 2008 version.27 Instead, Alabama is a partial-statute state: the 1980 Uniform Condominium Act for condominiums in Chapter 8A, a short homegrown HOA statute for post-2015 planned communities in Chapter 20, and Title 10A corporate law holding up both.
For operators moving into Alabama from other states, the takeaway is practical. The declaration still does most of the operational work, but a statutory floor now exists for condominiums and for post-2015 HOAs that managers cannot contract around. Momentum toward a comprehensive Alabama planned-community statute is low right now — but the 2024 SB 344 effort to extend Chapter 20 and cap declarant control suggests the floor is more likely to grow than to be replaced.
6. Closing note
HOA Weekly updates its Alabama Governing Statute coverage every quarter, as the Legislature and the appellate courts act. Federal frameworks apply to every Alabama association too, whatever state chapter governs it — the Fair Housing Act, the Americans with Disabilities Act, the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act, the Servicemembers Civil Relief Act, and the FCC's Over-the-Air Reception Devices rule. The cross-state federal analysis will live at /federal/ once that section publishes.
Footnotes
- Alabama Uniform Condominium Act of 1991, Ala. Code §§ 35-8A-101 to -417 (1975) (enacted by Act No. 90-551, 1990 Ala. Acts 858). ↩
- Ala. Code § 35-8A-102 (1975) (applicability). ↩
- Homeowners' Associations, Ala. Sec'y of State (Act No. 2015-292, eff. Jan. 1, 2016). ↩
- Ala. Code § 35-8A-101 (1975) (short title). ↩
- Ala. Code § 35-8A-302 (1975) (powers of unit owners' association) (amended by Act No. 2018-403). ↩
- Ala. Code §§ 35-8A-101 to -417 (1975) (arts. 1–4). ↩
- Ala. Code § 35-8A-103 (1975) (definitions). ↩
- Ala. Code §§ 35-8-1 to -22 (1975) (enacted by Acts 1964, 1st Ex. Sess., No. 206; amended by Acts 1973, No. 1059). ↩
- Homeowners' Associations, Ala. Sec'y of State (enacted June 2, 2015, eff. Jan. 1, 2016). ↩
- Ala. Code § 35-20-3 (1975) (applicability). ↩
- Ala. Code § 35-20-5 (1975) (organization as nonprofit corporation). ↩
- Ala. Sec'y of State, Domestic HOA Certificate of Formation and Supplement (Jan. 2024). ↩
- Ala. Code § 35-20-8 (1975) (priority of declaration). ↩
- Ala. Code §§ 35-20-9 to -13 (1975). ↩
- Ala. Code § 35-8A-308 (1975) (meetings). ↩
- Ala. Code § 35-8A-303 (1975) (board members and officers). ↩
- Ala. Code § 35-8A-318 (1975) (association records) (amended by Act No. 2018-403). ↩
- Ala. Code § 35-8A-316 (1975) (lien for assessments). ↩
- Ala. Code § 35-8A-408 (1975) (purchaser's right to cancel) (amended by Act No. 2018-403). ↩
- Ala. Code § 35-20-13 (1975) (records). ↩
- Ala. Code § 12-3-10 (1975) (appellate jurisdiction of the Court of Civil Appeals over civil cases not exceeding $50,000). ↩
- S.B. 344, 2024 Reg. Sess. (Ala. 2024) (introduced text). ↩
- Bill Search, Ala. Legis. Info. Sys. Online (ALISON) (2025 & 2026 Reg. Sess.). ↩
- Ex parte Caribe Resort Condo. Ass'n Bd. of Dirs., Nos. SC-2023-0624 & SC-2024-0762 (Ala. Dec. 13, 2024) (plurality opinion). ↩
- Phoenix E. Ass'n v. Perdido Dunes Tower Condo. Ass'n, No. SC-2023-0481 (Ala. Mar. 29, 2024) (substituted opinion on reh'g ex mero motu). ↩
- Bull v. Salsman, 435 So. 2d 27, 29 (Ala. 1983). ↩
- Cmty. Ass'ns Inst., Advocacy (listing 1982-version UCIOA adopters Alaska, Colorado, Minnesota, Nevada & West Virginia and 2008-version adopters Connecticut, Delaware, Vermont & Washington). ↩