Indiana HOA Director Qualifications

1. Overview: Who can serve on an HOA or condominium board in Indiana

Start with where the rules begin. In Indiana, who may serve on a homeowners association or condominium board comes down first to each association's own articles of incorporation and bylaws, and to the Indiana Nonprofit Corporation Act of 1991. The Homeowners Associations Act and the Condominium Act add procedural duties for how a board governs, but on the question of eligibility they hand the decision back to the governing documents.¹ The Homeowners Associations Act, codified at Ind. Code § 32-25.5 and added by P.L.167-2009, governs homeowners associations formed after June 30, 2009, along with older associations whose members vote to be bound by it; condominiums answer to a separate law, the Indiana Condominium Act at Ind. Code § 32-25.² Most Indiana community associations organize as mutual benefit nonprofit corporations under the Nonprofit Corporation Act at Ind. Code § 23-17.³ Indiana sets no statutory certification or education requirement for directors, no term limit, and no automatic disqualification for owners who fall behind on dues or carry a criminal record — a sharp break from heavy-touch states such as Florida and California.⁴ The sections that follow trace where the director rules actually come from, lay out the operative eligibility, disqualification, and tenure rules, and review the recent legislative and judicial activity that bears on who serves.

2. Where director qualifications come from

2A. The Homeowners Associations Act and the Condominium Act

Indiana frames association governance with two property-law statutes — the Homeowners Associations Act (Ind. Code § 32-25.5) and the Indiana Condominium Act (Ind. Code § 32-25) — and both are procedural, not qualification-setting.² The Homeowners Associations Act regulates annual budgets, records inspection, open board meetings, proxies, amendment of the governing documents, and an internal grievance process. It tells a board how to operate, but it leaves the question of who may sit on it to the governing documents.⁵ Its reach is date-driven: associations formed after June 30, 2009, that may charge mandatory dues fall under the entire Act, while associations formed before July 1, 2009, are bound in full only if a majority of members votes to be governed by it.⁶ The Condominium Act runs a parallel course — it covers bylaws, board meetings open to co-owners, records, common expenses, and insurance, and it requires the bylaws to set the board's size, its terms, and the method for removing a director.⁷ Neither statute imposes a certification or education requirement, a term limit, or an automatic disqualification for delinquency or a felony conviction. Both defer to the articles and bylaws on who is eligible to run.⁴

2B. The corporate-law layer: the Indiana Nonprofit Corporation Act of 1991

Most Indiana associations incorporate as mutual benefit corporations under the Indiana Nonprofit Corporation Act of 1991, Ind. Code § 23-17, and that act supplies the corporate scaffolding for the board.³ It sets the structural baselines. A board must have at least three individuals, with the exact number fixed in or under the articles or bylaws (Ind. Code § 23-17-12-3).⁸ A director must be an individual, and the articles or bylaws may prescribe qualifications for directors (Ind. Code § 23-17-12-2).⁹ The default term runs one year unless a governing document says otherwise, directors may serve successive terms, and staggered terms are allowed (Ind. Code §§ 23-17-12-5, 23-17-12-6).¹⁰ The act also governs how members remove directors (Ind. Code § 23-17-12-8), how the board removes a board-elected director (Ind. Code § 23-17-12-9), judicial removal (Ind. Code § 23-17-12-13), and action by written consent of members holding at least 80 percent of the votes (Ind. Code § 23-17-10-4).¹¹ The Indiana Court of Appeals spelled out how this layer meshes with the governing documents in Heritage Lake Property Owners Association, Inc. v. York, holding that "the articles of incorporation and bylaws of a nonprofit corporation constitute a contract" read under ordinary contract-law principles, and that any limit on the members' statutory power to remove a member-elected director must appear in the articles, not merely the bylaws.¹²

2C. The articles, bylaws, and Attorney General enforcement

The articles of incorporation and bylaws are where candidate eligibility actually gets decided in Indiana, because both the Homeowners Associations Act and the Condominium Act defer to them and the Nonprofit Corporation Act expressly lets them prescribe director qualifications.⁹ The order of precedence runs from the controlling property statute (the Homeowners Associations Act or the Condominium Act), to the articles and bylaws, to the Nonprofit Corporation Act defaults that fill the gaps, and finally to board-adopted rules. One enforcement feature stands apart, and it sits in the Homeowners Associations Act: Ind. Code § 32-25.5-4 lets the Indiana Attorney General sue an association's board, or an individual board member, for knowing or intentional misappropriation or diversion of association funds, for knowingly using a board seat to commit fraud or a crime, or for proxy violations — with remedies that include an injunction, restitution, removal of the board member, and a civil penalty capped at $500 per violation.¹³ That is a backstop for defined misconduct, not day-to-day regulation. As the Attorney General's consumer protection division has put it publicly, the office's authority over associations is "constrained and confined by what the statutes say," and most complaints close for lack of jurisdiction or insufficient evidence.¹⁴ In practice, the working rulebook for an Indiana board is the articles and bylaws, read against the Nonprofit Corporation Act.

3. Director eligibility, disqualification, and tenure rules

A. Eligibility to serve

Whether a director has to be a member or unit owner is set by the governing documents, not by the Homeowners Associations Act. Under the Nonprofit Corporation Act, a director need only be an individual, and the articles or bylaws may add qualifications such as membership (Ind. Code § 23-17-12-2) — a rule that applies both to HOAs and to condominium associations organized as nonprofit corporations.⁹ For condominiums, the Condominium Act goes a step further: it requires the bylaws to provide for electing the board "from among the co-owners," so an owner-director requirement is the statutory baseline on the condominium side (Ind. Code § 32-25-8-2).⁷ Neither property statute imposes a residency or age requirement; any such screen comes from the articles or bylaws.⁹ Good-standing or current-on-assessments requirements for candidates likewise come from the governing documents rather than statute — Indiana law touches delinquency only by limiting when an association may suspend a member's voting rights, not by barring candidacy.¹⁵ How an association treats co-owners, spouses, trustees, and entity representatives is also a documentary question, limited only by the Nonprofit Corporation Act's rule that a director must be a natural person (Ind. Code § 23-17-12-2).⁹

B. Disqualification and removal

Delinquency and criminal history do not automatically disqualify a candidate or a sitting director under Indiana statute; any such bar is documentary, written into the articles or bylaws. Florida runs the other way: Fla. Stat. § 720.3033(4)(a) (2024) provides that a director or officer "charged by information or indictment" with theft or embezzlement of association funds or property, ballot forgery, obstruction of justice, or any criminal violation under the chapter "must be removed from office and a vacancy declared," and may not be appointed or elected while the charges are pending.¹⁶ Conflict-of-interest limits on service, too, flow from the governing documents and from the Nonprofit Corporation Act's conflicting-interest-transaction provisions rather than from a property-statute screen.¹⁷ Owner-initiated removal runs through the Nonprofit Corporation Act: members may remove a member-elected director with or without cause unless the articles provide otherwise, and removal takes the number of votes that would have been enough to elect the director (Ind. Code § 23-17-12-8).¹⁸ The Court of Appeals applied exactly that in Heritage Lake v. York, holding that a member could move to remove a director without alleging "just cause," because a "just cause" limit appearing only in the bylaws could not override the members' statutory removal power — a power that can be narrowed only in the articles.¹² A court may also remove a director for fraudulent or dishonest conduct or gross abuse of authority, in a proceeding brought by the corporation or by at least 10 percent of the members entitled to vote (Ind. Code § 23-17-12-13).¹⁹ The mechanics of a removal vote — notice, quorum, and balloting — belong to board-elections coverage, not to director qualifications.

C. Board composition and terms

Minimum board size is a Nonprofit Corporation Act default: at least three individuals, with the exact number set in or under the articles or bylaws, and no statutory maximum (Ind. Code § 23-17-12-3).⁸ Term length defaults to one year under the Nonprofit Corporation Act unless the articles or bylaws say otherwise, staggered terms are allowed, and directors may serve successive terms (Ind. Code §§ 23-17-12-5, 23-17-12-6).¹⁰ For condominiums, the Condominium Act adds a baseline of its own, requiring the bylaws to expire the terms of at least one-third of the directors each year, which builds staggering into condominium boards (Ind. Code § 32-25-8-2).⁷ Indiana sets no statutory term limit on association directors under either the property statutes or the Nonprofit Corporation Act; any term limit is documentary.⁴ Declarant or developer board representation, and the handoff to owner control, are governed by the declaration and bylaws rather than a detailed statutory transition timeline, with the Condominium Act recognizing the declarant's reserved rights in the condominium instruments.²⁰

D. Onboarding and ongoing qualification duties

Indiana requires no director certification or education as a condition of serving — again a plain contrast with Florida, where Fla. Stat. § 720.3033(1)(a) (2024) provides that "[w]ithin 90 days after being elected or appointed to the board, each director must submit a certificate of having satisfactorily completed the educational curriculum administered by a department-approved education provider," covering "financial literacy and transparency, recordkeeping, levying of fines, and notice and meeting requirements," with a non-compliant director suspended until he or she complies.¹⁶ Conflict-of-interest disclosure expectations flow from the Nonprofit Corporation Act's conflicting-interest-transaction provisions and from the governing documents, not from a property-statute onboarding mandate.¹⁷ The standard-of-care baseline for a director of a mutual benefit corporation comes from Ind. Code § 23-17-13-1: a director must act in good faith, with the care an ordinarily prudent person in a like position would use under similar circumstances, and in a manner the director reasonably believes to be in the corporation's best interests; the director may rely on competent officers, counsel, and accountants, is not a trustee, and is not liable absent willful misconduct or recklessness.²¹ The Attorney General enforcement backstop under Ind. Code § 32-25.5-4 supplies the public-enforcement layer for knowing or intentional misappropriation of association funds.¹³

4. Recent legislative and judicial activity

A. Recent bills

Indiana's General Assembly weighed an HOA board-training measure in the past 24 months but did not enact it. The most directly relevant proposal was Senate Bill 445 (2025).

No bill enacted in the past 24 months changed director eligibility, board composition, or removal under the Homeowners Associations Act, the Condominium Act, or the Nonprofit Corporation Act. House Bill 1152 (2026), an HOA measure moving through the General Assembly, deals with budgets and the regulation of in-home child care, not director qualifications, and so falls outside the scope of this page.²³

B. Recent appellate rulings

C. Active legislative debates

Board training has stayed a live legislative theme since Senate Bill 445 died in 2025, but as of this update no pending Indiana proposal would impose director eligibility screens, term limits, or automatic disqualifications.

5. National positioning and related coverage

Indiana is a light-touch state for director qualifications. A homeowners association statute and a separate condominium statute lay procedural duties on boards, but both defer to the governing documents on who may serve — so eligibility, terms, and disqualification rest on the articles and bylaws, read against the Indiana Nonprofit Corporation Act of 1991.¹ That puts Indiana well below heavy-touch states such as Florida, which requires statutory director certification or education and disqualifies certain charged or convicted directors, and below moderate-touch states that use a statutory common-interest owners' bill of rights to dictate what the bylaws must address.¹⁶ For a multi-state operator, the practical upshot is that Indiana statute imposes almost nothing on eligibility, so each association's governing documents and its mutual benefit corporate form do the controlling work. One feature several states lack is Indiana's Attorney General enforcement backstop for knowing or intentional misappropriation of association funds.¹³

HOA Weekly refreshes its Indiana director-qualifications coverage each quarter, as the General Assembly and the Indiana courts act. Federal frameworks rarely dictate director qualifications, but Indiana 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. Ind. Code § 23-17 (Indiana Nonprofit Corporation Act of 1991) and Ind. Code § 32-25.5 (Homeowners Associations Act) ↩
2. Ind. Code § 32-25.5 (Homeowners Associations Act, added P.L.167-2009) and Ind. Code § 32-25 (Condominium Act) ↩
3. Ind. Code § 23-17, Nonprofit Corporations (mutual benefit corporations) ↩
4. Ind. Code § 23-17-12 (Directors): no statutory certification, term limit, or automatic disqualification ↩
5. Ind. Code § 32-25.5-3-3 (budgets, records, board meetings) ↩
6. Ind. Code § 32-25.5-1-1 (applicability; associations after June 30, 2009, or electing in) ↩
7. Ind. Code § 32-25-8-2 (condominium bylaws; board elected from co-owners; one-third terms expire annually; removal method) ↩
8. Ind. Code § 23-17-12-3 (number of directors; at least three) ↩
9. Ind. Code § 23-17-12-2 (director must be an individual; articles or bylaws may prescribe qualifications) ↩
10. Ind. Code §§ 23-17-12-5, 23-17-12-6 (term; staggered terms) ↩
11. Ind. Code § 23-17-10-4 (action without meeting; 80 percent member consent) ↩
12. Heritage Lake Property Owners Ass'n, Inc. v. York, 859 N.E.2d 763 (Ind. Ct. App. 2007) ↩
13. Ind. Code §§ 32-25.5-4-1, 32-25.5-4-2 (Attorney General actions; remedies; civil penalty) ↩
14. Indiana Attorney General, Consumer Protection Division / Homeowner Protection Unit ↩
15. Ind. Code § 32-25.5-3-7 (suspension of voting rights for nonpayment) ↩
16. Fla. Stat. § 720.3033 (2024) (director certification; removal and disqualification on theft/embezzlement charge) (comparison) ↩
17. Ind. Code § 23-17-13 (standards of conduct; conflicting-interest transactions) ↩
18. Ind. Code § 23-17-12-8 (removal of director by vote of members) ↩
19. Ind. Code § 23-17-12-13 (removal by court order) ↩
20. Ind. Code § 32-25 (Condominium Act; declarant reserved rights) ↩
21. Ind. Code § 23-17-13-1 (standards of conduct for directors) ↩
22. Indiana Senate Bill 445 (2025), Homeowners association matters ↩
23. Indiana House Bill 1152 (2026), Homeowners association matters ↩
24. Murray v. Duneland Beach Homeowners' Ass'n, Inc., No. 23A-PL-02868 (Ind. Ct. App. Nov. 22, 2024) ↩