The trap, stated as plainly as we can

An association that fined members before 1 July 2026 under covenant authority, and has simply carried on since, is now doing something the statute conditions on a document it has not adopted.

We are not going to predict how any particular dispute resolves — that is not what this publication does. What we can say is what the statute requires on its face: the schedule is a precondition to the exercise of the statutory power. An association fining without one is not operating under IC 32-25.5-3-12, and any fine it levies has to find its authority entirely in its own documents, in front of a court that now has a statutory template to compare it against.

Every board that fines should treat adopting a schedule as the most urgent item on its list. It is a single meeting's work.

Drafting the schedule

The statutory minimum is the outline. What makes a schedule durable:

1. Name violations specifically enough to be applied consistently. “Nuisance” is not a schedule entry; “refuse container visible from the street outside collection hours” is. Vague entries invite selective-enforcement allegations, which are the most damaging thing an association can face in this area.
2. Set amounts proportionate to the violation, not to the board's frustration.
3. Decide the recurrence question deliberately. If a fine can recur, the statute requires a maximum aggregate. Choose that number thinking about the worst case — a continuing violation over a long period — because the cap is what stops an unresolved dispute compounding into a sum secured against a home.
4. Write the pre-fine notice as a form, not as something drafted afresh each time. The notice duty is statutory and a defective notice is the easiest thing for an owner to point at.
5. Anticipate the amendment petition. Members can force a majority vote on your schedule. A schedule that a majority would not vote to keep is a schedule with a limited life, and it is better to find that out at adoption than after the first controversial fine.

What the notice-and-cure change actually does

Moving fines out of the exempt-claims category is not a technicality. It inserts a mandatory step between the dispute and the courthouse.

For a board, that means the fast route is gone. Assessment collection can still proceed directly; a fine dispute must go through the pre-suit process. That lengthens the timeline and creates a procedural defence the association did not previously have to worry about.

For an owner, it is a genuine and underrated protection. It creates a compulsory moment at which the association must articulate the violation and the owner has a defined opportunity to respond, before anyone is in litigation with fees running. Owners who use that window carefully — in writing, on the record, addressing the specific schedule entry cited — get considerably more out of it than owners who ignore it and argue later.

The interaction nobody has flagged

Two other 2026 changes bear directly on how a schedule of fines gets adopted and challenged.

First, the board meeting adopting the schedule is subject to the new four-day advance notice with an agenda requirement. A schedule adopted at a meeting that did not comply is adopted at a defective meeting.

Second, members' route to amending the schedule runs through the special-meeting demand mechanism, and the new notice rules require the annual meeting notice to carry a statement of members' right to demand one. The legislature built the challenge route and then required the association to tell members it exists.

The provision this replaces in practice

Indiana associations have historically fined under covenant language of widely varying quality, and the enforceability of those provisions was a live question in every dispute. The new section does not invalidate covenant-based fining authority. What it does is give a statutory route that is clear, conditional, and identical across associations — and a board that satisfies it is standing on much firmer ground than one relying on a 1997 declaration's general enforcement clause.

What to watch

The first Indiana appellate decision construing IC 32-25.5-3-12. The obvious questions — what counts as adequate publication of a schedule, what happens to a fine levied before one was adopted, how the aggregate cap interacts with a continuing violation — are unanswered, and the section is ten weeks old.