Three 2026 amendments will show up in your declaration review and change nothing
Three 2026 amendments will show up in your declaration review and change nothing
2026-09-10 · Illinois · Legislation
What happened. Three 2025-2026 Public Acts touched sections of the Condominium Property Act and adjacent statutes without changing what any of them require. Each will nonetheless appear in a 2027 citator check or a redlined declaration review, and each is the kind of thing that generates an unnecessary legal bill.
1. HB 4284 / P.A. 104-0598 — accessible parking terminology
Signed July 24, 2026, effective January 1, 2027. A statewide terminology cleanup replacing “disabled person” with “person with a disability” across dozens of Acts, including 765 ILCS 605/18.12(c).1
No substantive requirement changed. Under 18.12, all of the following remain exactly as they were: the board must adopt an accessible-parking accommodation policy; the review period is capped at 45 days from submission; existing condominiums had 90 days from the 103rd General Assembly amendment's effective date to adopt the policy, and new-construction boards get 90 days from election of the initial board; accessible spaces in post-2025 new-construction and conversion condominiums must remain common elements; owners with disabilities retain priority over non-disabled licensees; and the private right of action against a developer or declarant — declaratory relief, actual damages, punitive damages, equitable relief — is unchanged, as is the express shield protecting the association from a developer's non-compliance.
The only thing to do is conform the wording of the association's accessible-parking policy at its next revision.
2. SB 3731 / P.A. 104-0852 — First 2026 General Revisory Act
Signed and effective August 21, 2026. Expressly “not intended to make any substantive change in the law.”2
Its only touch on association law is punctuation in 765 ILCS 605/9.1 — commas inserted around “including, but not limited to,” in the two sentences shielding unit owners, non-developer board members and the association from claims, damages and judgments (including State or local government fees or fines) arising from board or developer action or inaction.
This matters only because of where it landed. Section 9.1 is the owner-liability shield, and it is a provision counsel checks whenever a board faces a claim. Its source note will now carry a 104th General Assembly citation. It is commas.
The same Act also reconciled competing 2026 amendments to the Regulatory Sunset Act lists — the reason the community association manager licensing sunset now unambiguously reads January 1, 2032 rather than sitting in two conflicting versions.
3. SB 2394 / P.A. 104-0417 — First 2025 General Revisory Act
Signed and effective August 15, 2025. Also expressly non-substantive.3 It reconciles multiple 2024 Public Acts that amended the same sections, renumbers duplicates and fixes cross-references.
The association-adjacent sections it touched: 765 ILCS 745/17 (the mobile home statutory lease notice), 765 ILCS 705/25 and 705/30, 765 ILCS 721/20 (Landlord Retaliation Act), several sections of the Illinois Human Rights Act including 775 ILCS 5/3-106 — the real-estate-transactions exemptions — and 735 ILCS 5/15-1603, plus renumbering 735 ILCS 5/804.5 to 8-804.5.
The 3-106 entry is the one most likely to alarm someone, because Article 3 is the Article under which an association's housing-discrimination charge runs. It is reconciliation only. The substantive Article 3 question this year is whether the new disparate-impact Act reaches it, and that is a different statute.
Why this is worth publishing at all
Because the failure mode is expensive and predictable. A board doing a governing-document review in 2027 asks counsel to check what changed. Counsel runs a citator, finds recent Public Act citations on 605/18.12, 605/9.1 and 775 ILCS 5/3-106, and reasonably investigates all three. That is billable time spent confirming that nothing happened.
The general rule worth internalising: Illinois passes a General Revisory Act most years, and it puts a fresh Public Act citation on hundreds of sections it does not change. A recent citation is not evidence of a recent change. Read the Act's own statement of purpose first — both of the revisory Acts above say plainly what they are.
What to watch next
The 2027 revisory act, which will do the same thing again. The substantive changes to watch for are the ones covered separately in this column, all of which name the section they amend and say what the new duty is.
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