Kentucky HOA Director Qualifications

1. Overview: Who can serve on a condominium or planned community board in Kentucky

Kentucky is a moderate-touch state, and it sorts community associations into four statutory tracks. Two facts decide the track: the type of community and the date it was created. Across all four tracks, director qualifications come mainly from two places — the association's own governing documents and the Kentucky Nonprofit Corporation Act. The condominium statute and the 2023 planned-community statute lay procedural overlays on top, but none of them adds a certification requirement, a statutory term limit, or an automatic bar for a delinquent owner or a person with a criminal history.

Here are the four tracks. Condominiums created on or after January 1, 2011 fall under the Kentucky Condominium Act.¹ Condominiums created before that date stay under the older Horizontal Property Law.² Planned communities created after June 29, 2023 fall under the Kentucky Planned Community Act.³ And planned communities created before June 29, 2023 rely on their recorded covenants together with the Nonprofit Corporation Act.⁴ Two dates do the sorting: January 1, 2011 for condominiums, and June 29, 2023 for planned communities.

The Planned Community Act matters because it is Kentucky's first statutory framework for non-condominium homeowner associations. But it looks forward, not back. It reaches only the planned communities formed after its effective date.³ That structure sets Kentucky apart from heavy-touch states such as Florida and California, which impose statutory director education, term limits, and automatic disqualification screens that Kentucky does not.⁵ The sections that follow show where the director rules come from in each track, state the eligibility, disqualification, and tenure rules with the layer each one rests on, and summarize the recent legislative and judicial activity.

2. Where director qualifications come from

2A. The four statutory tracks

Kentucky routes every association into one of those four tracks. Condominiums created on or after January 1, 2011 answer to the Kentucky Condominium Act, KRS 381.9101 to 381.9207. The Act's own applicability provision reaches all condominiums created in the Commonwealth after that date, and it borrowed heavily from the Uniform Common Interest Ownership Act — UCIOA — for governance, budgets, reserves, and disclosures.¹ Condominiums created before January 1, 2011 stay under the Horizontal Property Law, KRS 381.805 to 381.910, the legacy condominium framework the legislature enacted in 1962. A defined list of Condominium Act sections does reach back to those older condominiums, but only for events that occur after January 1, 2011.¹

Planned communities created after June 29, 2023 answer to the Kentucky Planned Community Act, KRS 381.785 to 381.801, which the legislature enacted as Senate Bill 120 in 2023.⁶ Planned communities created before that date fall outside the 2023 Act; they rely on their recorded covenants, the Nonprofit Corporation Act, and the common law.⁶ One caveat rides along with the UCIOA point: Kentucky borrowed from UCIOA for condominiums, but it did not adopt UCIOA across every community type. So you have to read the condominium board, removal, and declarant-control provisions out of the Kentucky text itself, rather than assume them from the uniform act. And none of the four tracks imposes a director certification or education requirement, a statutory term limit, or an automatic disqualification of a delinquent owner or a person with a felony conviction.

2B. The corporate-law layer: the Kentucky Nonprofit Corporation Act

Most Kentucky associations incorporate under the Kentucky Nonprofit Corporation Act, KRS 273.161 to 273.390, and that Act works as the corporate scaffolding beneath association governance. It sets the baseline director rules. The board has to consist of three or more individuals, with the number fixed in or in accordance with the articles of incorporation or the bylaws, and the articles or bylaws may set a minimum and a maximum.⁷ The same section lets the association divide directors into classes, sets a default term of one year when none is fixed, and allows removal of a director under whatever removal procedure the articles or bylaws provide.⁷ The Act also supplies the general standard of care for directors⁸ and a conflict-of-interest transaction provision.⁹

What the Act does not do is prescribe eligibility screens. It leaves the corporation free to set director qualifications in its articles and bylaws. Some associations organize instead under the Kentucky Business Corporation Act, KRS Chapter 271B. And for a planned community created before June 29, 2023, the Nonprofit Corporation Act is the principal statutory layer, working alongside the recorded covenants, because no Kentucky HOA-specific statute reaches that community. Remember what the Nonprofit Corporation Act is: a corporate governance statute, not an HOA statute.

2C. The declaration, covenants, and bylaws

Across all four tracks, the governing documents — the declaration or covenants, the articles of incorporation, and the bylaws — are the working source of the candidate eligibility screens. What changes from track to track is the order of precedence. For a condominium created on or after January 1, 2011, the Condominium Act controls first, then the declaration and bylaws, then the Nonprofit Corporation Act defaults, then the board's own rules. For a planned community created after June 29, 2023, the Planned Community Act controls first, then the declaration and bylaws, then the corporate defaults, then the rules. For the two legacy tracks, the older statute or the covenants control first, then the documents, then the corporate defaults, then the rules.

The practical sequence is the same every time. First, identify the community type and the creation date, because that picks the track. Then read the governing documents against the statutory layer that applies. And because Kentucky's statutory layer says so little about director eligibility even where it applies, the governing documents carry more weight here than they would in a heavy-touch state.

3. Director eligibility, disqualification, and tenure rules

3A. Eligibility to serve

Start with the planned communities created after June 29, 2023. The Planned Community Act requires the association to be run by a board of directors elected from among the owners, and it tells the owners to elect a board of at least three.¹⁰ The same section handles entity owners. When the owner is not a natural person, the board seat can go to a principal member of an LLC, or to a partner, director, officer, trustee, or employee of that owner.¹⁰

For a condominium created on or after January 1, 2011, the rule kicks in once declarant control ends: the unit owners elect an executive board of at least three members, and a majority of them have to be unit owners or owners of equity interests in units.¹¹ For a condominium created before January 1, 2011, the Horizontal Property Law leaves administration to the bylaws the council of co-owners adopts, and it imposes no member or residency screen.² For a planned community created before June 29, 2023, eligibility runs off the covenants and bylaws against the Nonprofit Corporation Act defaults — and those defaults impose no owner, residency, age, or good-standing requirement.⁷ So how the association treats co-owners, spouses, trustees, and entity representatives is a documentary question in every track, except where the Planned Community Act and the Condominium Act supply the owner or unit-owner baselines just described.

3B. Disqualification and removal

Kentucky imposes no automatic statutory disqualification in any of the four tracks — not for an assessment delinquency, and not for a criminal record. Any such bar has to come from the governing documents. For an incorporated association, the Nonprofit Corporation Act says a director may be removed under whatever removal procedure the articles of incorporation or bylaws provide.⁷

The Planned Community Act adds a statutory removal rule for planned communities created after June 29, 2023. Unless the declaration or bylaws demand a higher percentage, the owners may remove any board member, with or without cause — the one exception being a director the declarant appointed — by a majority vote of everyone present in person or by proxy at a meeting that has a quorum.¹⁰ The Condominium Act's executive-board section governs the declarant-control transition and the board election, but it leaves the post-transition removal mechanics largely to the declaration, the bylaws, and corporate law.¹¹ The step-by-step vote mechanics of a removal meeting — notice, quorum, proxies, ballots — belong to board elections, a separate topic this page does not cover. The conflict-of-interest limits for an incorporated association come from the Nonprofit Corporation Act's conflict-of-interest transaction provision.⁹

3C. Board composition and terms

The minimum board size is three directors in every track that addresses it — the Nonprofit Corporation Act default,⁷ the Condominium Act's post-transition executive board,¹¹ and the Planned Community Act.¹⁰ The maximum comes from the governing documents, which may also fix a variable range under the Nonprofit Corporation Act. Term length, staggered or classified terms, and any term limit also come from the governing documents; the Nonprofit Corporation Act permits classes of directors and supplies a one-year default term only when the documents say nothing.⁷ Kentucky imposes no statutory director term limit in any track.

Two statutes handle declarant and developer control of the board. The Condominium Act caps the declarant-control period. It ends no later than the earliest of four moments: sixty days after seventy-five percent of the units that may be created have been conveyed to non-declarant owners; two years after all declarants have stopped offering units in the ordinary course of business; two years after the last exercise of a development right; or seven years after the first unit was conveyed.¹¹ The Planned Community Act takes a lighter hand. It requires the declaration to provide a declarant-control period and to spell out the time and manner it ends, and it lets a declarant surrender control early — but it does not cap how long that period can run.¹²

3D. Onboarding and ongoing qualification duties

Kentucky requires no director certification and no director education in any track. That stands in sharp contrast to Florida, which makes every newly elected or appointed director complete a state-approved curriculum within a one-year window before — or ninety days after — taking office.⁵ A Kentucky director's onboarding duties run instead through the open-meeting and records framework and the fiduciary baseline. The Condominium Act and the Planned Community Act both require open board meetings. The Planned Community Act says board meetings shall be open to owners except during executive sessions, and it sets a board quorum of fifty-one percent of the directors.¹³

The standard of care is the Nonprofit Corporation Act baseline: a director has to discharge the job in good faith, on an informed basis, and in a way the director honestly believes serves the best interests of the corporation.⁸ The Planned Community Act expressly carries that same standard over to directors of unincorporated associations, cross-referencing KRS 273.215 and 273.229.¹³ The Condominium Act, for its part, sets a director-friendly liability standard, shielding board members from monetary damages unless they engage in willful misconduct or wanton or reckless disregard.¹⁴ And the conflict-of-interest disclosure expectations for an incorporated association rest on KRS 273.219.⁹

4. Recent legislative and judicial activity

4A. Recent bills

No bill enacted in the past 24 months amends the Condominium Act, the Planned Community Act, or the Nonprofit Corporation Act on the specific questions of association director qualifications, board composition, or removal. The one statute that built Kentucky's planned-community director framework falls just outside that window, so we note it here as recent context.

Status Signed

⊶ Last verified June 24, 2026

Docket

SB 120 · 2023 Regular Session

Effective

Jun 29, 2023

Sunset

N/A

Residential communities; creation of the Kentucky Planned Community Act

Synopsis

Senate Bill 120, "AN ACT relating to residential communities," became the Kentucky Planned Community Act, KRS 381.785 to 381.801. Governor Andy Beshear signed it on March 20, 2023, and it took effect on June 29, 2023.[6] On director qualifications and board composition, it does four things: it requires a board of at least three directors elected from among the owners, it lets a representative of an entity owner serve, it requires the declaration to set a declarant-control period, and it lets owners remove a non-declarant director with or without cause by a majority vote at a meeting that has a quorum.[10]

Operational impact

What this means, by role

Property managers	For any planned community formed after June 29, 2023, confirm the board has at least three owner-directors and that the declaration sets a declarant-control end date before relying on board actions.
HOA board members	Boards of newer planned communities have to follow the statutory three-director minimum and the owner-removal rule, which the documents can make stricter but not weaker.
Community association attorneys	The Act supplies default removal and composition rules but leaves eligibility screens to the documents, so advise clients to draft them expressly.
Homeowners	In a planned community formed after June 29, 2023, owners can remove most board members by majority vote at a properly held meeting.

A separate 2024 enactment, House Bill 472, signed April 9, 2024 as Chapter 150 of the Acts, lets a city petition a court to appoint a receiver to run the affairs of a residential planned community that fails to maintain its infrastructure, common areas, stormwater facilities, or other legally required facilities. It does not touch director qualifications, composition, or removal, so it falls outside this topic.¹⁵

4B. Recent appellate rulings

No qualifying published appellate ruling in the past 36 months has been verified as addressing director eligibility, removal, board composition, or the director standard of care. The Kentucky Court of Appeals decided at least two homeowner-versus-association appeals in 2025, but their opinions could not be verified as bearing on director qualifications — and at least one of them, Panaretos v. Villas at Claymont Springs Community Association, Inc., No. 2024-CA-1229-MR (Ky. App. Dec. 5, 2025), carries a "Not To Be Published" designation, which means it may not be cited as authority in Kentucky courts. HOA Weekly will add any qualifying opinion once it is verified against the published record. Trial-level disputes move through the Kentucky Circuit Courts, with appeals to the Kentucky Court of Appeals and discretionary review by the Kentucky Supreme Court.

4C. Active legislative debates

The Community Associations Institute's Kentucky Legislative Action Committee has flagged the modernization of single-family HOA statutes as an area of interest. That work could, in time, broaden the Planned Community Act to reach older communities — but no enacted measure does so today.

5. National positioning and related coverage

Kentucky is a moderate-touch state. Its four-track structure — condominiums split at January 1, 2011, planned communities split at June 29, 2023 — layers procedural overlays through the Condominium Act and the newer Planned Community Act, while it leaves director eligibility, terms, and disqualification to the governing documents and the Nonprofit Corporation Act. That puts Kentucky between two poles. On one side sit heavy-touch states such as Florida, which require director certification or education, allow term limits — Florida caps board service at eight consecutive years unless two-thirds of the owners vote otherwise — and automatically disqualify owners who are delinquent on monetary obligations while barring anyone convicted of a felony whose civil rights have not been restored for at least five years.⁵ On the other side sit light-touch states such as Iowa, where director eligibility is documentary and every member may serve unless the documents say otherwise.¹⁶

For a multi-state operator, the first question in Kentucky is always community type and creation date, because that one answer picks the statutory track — and most older planned communities sit outside the 2023 statute. Kentucky imposes no director certification requirement and no statutory term limit.

This Kentucky Director Qualifications coverage updates quarterly as the General Assembly and the Kentucky courts act. Federal frameworks rarely dictate director qualifications, but Kentucky 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 — across their broader operations.