The amendments now worth attempting

A board that has spent years being told amendment is impossible should revisit the list. In rough order of value:

1. The lien and enforcement clause. Indiana's Court of Appeals held in Treyburn Lakes that unpaid attorney-fee awards from earlier judgments belong in a foreclosure decree where the declaration secures them. Declarations that secure “assessments” alone do not get that result. This is a narrow, high-value amendment.
2. Architectural review that reaches common areas. In Slavick, an association's approval power was written to cover work on “a Lot” and therefore did not reach an installation on association-owned ground. Lakefront and open-space communities should read their clause with that case beside them.
3. Conditions precedent to assessing. Sandoval turned partly on the absence of language making meetings or a budget a precondition to levying. Whether the documents contain such language is a question for boards and owners alike.
4. Alignment with the 2026 statutory regime. Documents that contradict the new fee, notice and fining rules are not enforceable to the extent of the conflict, but they are actively misleading to members reading them.
5. Quorum requirements. Many Indiana bylaws set member quorums that have not been met in a decade. With remote attendance now counting, some associations will find the quorum reachable for the first time — and where it still is not, lowering it is now a two-thirds question.

The mortgagee-consent problem, and what the cap does about it

Worth dwelling on, because it is the provision that has defeated more Indiana amendments than any owner apathy.

Declarations frequently require consent from holders of a supermajority of first mortgages. Getting a lender to affirmatively consent to a covenant amendment is close to impossible: there is no department for it, no commercial incentive, and no consequence to the lender for ignoring the request. An association needing 75 percent lender consent effectively needed something no amount of member enthusiasm could deliver.

Capping that requirement at two-thirds does not make lenders responsive. What it does is lower the bar to a level where deemed-consent provisions — where a mortgagee that does not respond within a stated period is treated as consenting — can realistically carry an amendment. That turns on whether the documents contain such a provision, and if not, whether adding one is itself an amendment worth running first.

Running an amendment campaign that succeeds

Two-thirds of all owners is still a high bar, and it counts non-voters as opposition. What works:

• Amend one thing at a time. Omnibus restatements give every owner something to dislike. A single-issue amendment with a clear rationale passes; a forty-page restatement does not.
• Start with the owner roll. Most associations discover their contact data is materially wrong once they need to reach two-thirds of people. Fix that before you start counting.
• Use the full period and chase. Amendment consent is typically gathered over months by signature, not decided at a single meeting.
• Say what happens if it fails. Owners respond to a concrete consequence — uncollectable debts spread across everyone's assessment, an unenforceable architectural standard — far better than to an abstract case for modernisation.
• Get the drafting right. An amendment that passes and is defective is worse than one that never ran, because the two-thirds goodwill is spent.

A caution about what the cap does not do

It caps the threshold your documents may require. It does not lower a threshold below two-thirds, does not create an amendment power where the documents grant none, and does not disturb the 95 percent requirement for conveying common areas or dissolving the plan of governance.

It also does not resolve how the cap interacts with a declaration that requires, say, 80 percent. The statute says the documents “may not require” more than two-thirds — the natural reading is that the excess is unenforceable and two-thirds governs, but an association about to spend a year on an amendment campaign should have that reading confirmed by counsel before it starts, not after.

What to watch

The first Indiana amendment challenged on the basis that the association applied the statutory two-thirds rather than the higher figure in its recorded documents. That is the case that will settle the question above, and someone will bring it.