Delaware court flags two unanswered questions in the condominium resale-disclosure statute
Delaware court flags two unanswered questions in the condominium resale-disclosure statute
2026-08-03 · Delaware · Courts
Delaware's resale-disclosure statute for condominiums has two open questions in it, and a Superior Court judge has now said so on the record. Whether 25 Del. C. § 2237 reaches a request made after closing is “a matter of first impression.” Whether it requires disclosure of an assessment's outstanding principal or only its past-due payments is disputed and unresolved.
Meyers v. Chatham Cove Association of Unit Owners, C.A. No. K24A-10-002 NEP, was decided by Judge Noel Eason Primos on June 24, 2025 on appeal from the Court of Common Pleas. The judgment was reversed and remanded.1
What happened
A buyer took title to a unit at Chatham Cove in 2022. She was then billed $160 a month toward a roof-and-deck special assessment that the association had approved in 2019 — one the previous owner had elected to pay in instalments. She says she was never told about it.
She paid her regular common expenses and did not pay the special assessment. The association sued. After a trial de novo in the Court of Common Pleas it won $5,220 plus late fees, interest, costs, and $10,806.50 in attorneys' fees.
What the declaration is, legally
The first holding is settled law stated cleanly, and it is the part that will be quoted most. A condominium declaration together with its code of regulations “together form a contract between the unit owners.” Buying a unit makes the purchaser a party to that contract — including any fee-shifting clause it contains.
So the buyer did not escape the assessment by not knowing about it. What she got instead was a reversal on the amount, on the statute, and on the fees.
The damages award collapsed on the arithmetic
The trial court awarded “the remaining amount of the special assessment” when the association had pleaded only arrears. It also appeared to count late fees twice. And it gave no reasoning for the figure it landed on.
That is three independent problems in one number, and the appellate court sent it back. For associations, the operational lesson is unglamorous: the complaint defines the recovery. Suing for arrears and being awarded the whole outstanding balance is a windfall a Delaware court will take back.
Section 2237 is a live defence, and nobody knows how far it reaches
Section 2237 of the Unit Property Act obliges the treasurer of a condominium council to furnish a statement of unpaid assessments on request. The court held it is a defence that must be analysed, not waved past — and then declined to resolve either of the two questions it raises, because the posture did not permit it.2
Question one: timing. Does § 2237 reach a request made after settlement? The court called that a matter of first impression in Delaware. On the buyer's facts it matters enormously, because she learned of the assessment only once the bills started arriving.
Question two: what must be disclosed. Does the statement have to show the outstanding principal of an instalment assessment, or only the payments actually past due? A prior owner current on their instalments has no past-due amount while carrying thousands in remaining principal. If the statute means only past-due payments, a compliant statement can be delivered to a buyer who then inherits the balance.
Neither question has an answer yet. Our Delaware estoppel and resale page sets out the disclosure machinery as it currently stands; this decision marks where the machinery has a gap.
Fee awards need a Cox analysis on the record
The $10,806.50 fee award went back too. Even where a code of regulations shifts fees by contract, a Delaware court must test the amount against the General Motors v. Cox reasonableness factors. Awarding the full requested figure with no indication that the factors were considered is an abuse of discretion.
The court was careful about how much that requires: the consideration “may be brief, even conclusory,” but it must appear. A trial court that says nothing has not done it.
What it changes for Delaware associations
The instalment special assessment is the exposure. An assessment approved in 2019 and paid monthly by an owner who then sells is precisely the structure that produced this litigation. Associations that offer instalment plans should be recording the remaining principal against the unit, not just the arrears, and should say so in every resale statement they issue — whatever § 2237 turns out to require.
Answer resale requests in writing, and keep the copy. The treasurer's statement is the association's own best evidence, and here the record on what was disclosed and when was thin enough to require a remand.
Do not assume the fee clause delivers the fee. A contractual fee-shift gets an association entitlement, not quantum. The invoice still has to survive Cox, and a court can decline to award what it cannot see justified. That is the same discretionary reality visible in the Vincent Overlook case, where a prevailing association recovered nothing.
What to watch next
The case went back to the Court of Common Pleas. The § 2237 questions the Superior Court flagged are, on our reading of the current Delaware record, the most likely near-term source of new Delaware condominium law — they are squarely presented, they recur in every resale, and no appellate court has answered them.
Note the statutory setting. Section 2237 sits in the Unit Property Act at 25 Del. C. ch. 22, which governs condominiums created before September 30, 2009. Communities created on or after that date have their resale certificate obligations under DUCIOA instead, and this decision does not construe those.
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