Maine HOA Director Qualifications

Section 1: Overview

Maine sets its director qualifications in two main places: a community’s own governing documents and the Maine Nonprofit Corporation Act. For condominiums, the Maine Condominium Act — built on the Uniform Condominium Act — adds an executive board and a declarant-control framework. What it leaves out tells you just as much. It sets no certification requirement, no statutory term limit, and no automatic disqualification of owners who fall behind on dues or carry a criminal record. Maine also has no dedicated statute for planned communities that are not condominiums.¹

The date a condominium was created decides which law governs it. Condominiums created on or after January 1, 1983 fall under the Maine Condominium Act, 33 M.R.S. § 1601-101 et seq. Those created before that date answer to the older Maine Unit Ownership Act, 33 M.R.S. § 560 et seq.² Homeowners associations that are not condominiums have no property statute of their own; they run on recorded covenants, the Maine Nonprofit Corporation Act, 13-B M.R.S. § 101 et seq., and common law.³ That setup places Maine well apart from heavy-touch states such as Florida, which forces certification or education on directors, caps their terms, and bars delinquent owners and certain felons from serving.⁴ The sections that follow show where Maine’s director rules come from, what they require on eligibility, disqualification, and tenure, what the Legislature and the courts have done lately, and how Maine compares with other states.

Section 2: Where director qualifications come from

2A. The Maine Condominium Act and the older Unit Ownership Act

Condominiums created on or after January 1, 1983 fall under the Maine Condominium Act, 33 M.R.S. § 1601-101 to § 1604-118 (Title 33, Chapter 31). The Legislature enacted it in 1981 and modeled it on the 1980 Uniform Condominium Act.⁵ It governs every post-1983 condominium, and it reaches a pre-1983 condominium too if that community amends its instruments to opt in.² Condominiums created before January 1, 1983 stay under the older Maine Unit Ownership Act, 33 M.R.S. § 560 et seq.² These are two separate tracks, and you should not treat them as one.

On the board itself, the Condominium Act uses the term “executive board” — the body the declaration names to act for the association.⁶ Section 1603-103 covers the executive board’s members and officers, including the stretch of declarant control, when a declarant may appoint and remove them.⁷ That same section sets a floor: no later than the end of declarant control, the unit owners must elect an executive board of at least three people, a majority of whom own units, are married to unit owners, or — for an entity owner — serve as its designated agent.⁷ Section 1601-104 bars the parties from varying the Act by agreement and from waiving its rights except where the Act expressly allows.⁸ Section 1601-108 then lets the law of corporations and unincorporated associations fill the gaps, supplementing the Act except where the two conflict.⁹

Maine has no comprehensive planned-community statute. A homeowners association that is not a condominium answers to its recorded covenants, to the Maine Nonprofit Corporation Act if it incorporated, and to common law.³ None of these sources — for condominiums or for other associations — requires director certification or education, imposes a statutory term limit, or automatically disqualifies delinquent owners or people with criminal histories. Where those screens exist, they come from the governing documents.

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

Most Maine associations incorporate under the Maine Nonprofit Corporation Act, 13-B M.R.S. § 101 et seq., which runs corporate structure and procedure, directors included.³ Section 701 says a board of directors manages the corporation’s activities, that directors need not live in the State or belong to the corporation unless the articles or bylaws require it, and that the articles or bylaws may set other qualifications.¹⁰ Section 702 says the board may not drop below three directors, otherwise fixes the number through the bylaws or articles, and sets a default one-year term where nothing else governs.¹¹ Section 703 covers how the board fills vacancies, and Section 704 covers how the members remove a director.¹²

For a homeowners association that is not a condominium, the Nonprofit Corporation Act is the main statutory layer next to the recorded covenants, because no property statute supplies board rules. For a condominium, the Act backs up the Condominium Act through § 1601-108.⁹ Either way, the Act is the corporate scaffolding. It sets baselines for the number of directors, their terms, removal, vacancies, and the corporation’s power to set director qualifications, and it leaves each community free to sharpen those baselines in its own documents. It is a corporate-governance statute, not an HOA statute.

2C. The declaration and bylaws

The declaration and bylaws are where the real eligibility screens live for owner-elected directors. A requirement that a candidate be a member or owner, live nearby, reach a certain age, or stay current on assessments comes from those documents — backed by the Nonprofit Corporation Act’s grant of authority to set director qualifications — not from a statutory checklist.¹⁰

The order of precedence depends on the community type. For a condominium, the Maine Condominium Act controls first, and it may not be varied except where it expressly allows; then come the declaration and bylaws, then the Nonprofit Corporation Act defaults for the incorporated association, then the rules the board adopts.⁸ For a homeowners association that is not a condominium, the recorded covenants and bylaws control first, then the Nonprofit Corporation Act defaults, then the rules. So a manager or attorney vetting a candidate has to do two things first: pin down the community type and, for a condominium, its creation date — then read the governing documents against the statute that applies.

Section 3: Director eligibility, disqualification, and tenure rules

A. Eligibility to serve

Whether a director has to be a member or unit owner depends on which layer you are reading. Under the Maine Nonprofit Corporation Act, § 701, directors need not be members unless the articles or bylaws require it, and the articles or bylaws may add other qualifications.¹⁰ That is a corporate default the documents can change, and it covers any incorporated association — a post-1983 condominium, a pre-1983 condominium, or a homeowners association that is not a condominium. For post-1983 condominiums, the Condominium Act adds a composition floor: once declarant control ends, the elected executive board must hold at least three people, a majority of them unit owners, spouses of unit owners, or, for an entity owner, a designated agent (33 M.R.S. § 1603-103).⁷ That majority-ownership rule is a statutory mandate, not just a documentary preference.

The Condominium Act and the Nonprofit Corporation Act set no residency, age, or good-standing bar. Section 701 confirms a director need not be a resident unless the documents say so.¹⁰ Any age or good-standing screen is documentary — it lives in the declaration, covenants, or bylaws, and it binds only the communities that adopt it. How a community treats co-owners, spouses, trustees, and entity representatives is largely documentary too, though the Condominium Act does let a unit owner’s spouse or an entity owner’s designated agent count toward the post-transition majority (§ 1603-103).⁷

B. Disqualification and removal

For an incorporated association, the Maine Nonprofit Corporation Act, § 704, governs owner-initiated removal. At a special members’ meeting called for that purpose, the members may remove the whole board or any single director, with or without cause, by a two-thirds vote of those entitled to vote for directors; the articles may set a lower bar, but never below a majority of the members voting on the removal.¹² That is a corporate rule the articles can soften, and it reaches any incorporated association across all three tracks. Section 704-A separately lets the Superior Court remove a director by judicial proceeding on specified grounds.¹³ During declarant control of a condominium, the declarant or the people it designates may appoint and remove the officers and members of the executive board (33 M.R.S. § 1603-103(d)).⁷ The mechanics of an owner-removal vote — the special-meeting notice and the conduct of the vote — belong with board-election procedure.

Delinquent assessments and a criminal record do not automatically disqualify a candidate or a sitting director in Maine. Neither the Condominium Act nor the Nonprofit Corporation Act carries such a bar.⁷ Any disqualification of that kind is documentary; it applies only where the declaration, covenants, or bylaws impose it. Conflict-of-interest limits come from the corporate layer instead — the Nonprofit Corporation Act’s conflict-of-interest transaction rules and its general standard of care, supplemented for condominiums by common law under § 1601-108. Those limits govern how an interested director may act; they do not bar service outright.¹⁴

C. Board composition and terms

Both statutes set the floor at three directors. The Nonprofit Corporation Act, § 702, says the number may not fall below three, and the Condominium Act’s post-transition rule calls for an elected executive board of at least three (§ 1603-103).¹¹ The maximum, and the exact number above the floor, comes from the bylaws or articles under § 702.¹¹ For a non-condominium association, the number rests on the covenants, the bylaws, and § 702; for a condominium, on § 1603-103 read with the declaration and bylaws.

Term length and staggered terms are documentary or corporate. The Condominium Act lets the declaration stagger the executive board’s terms (§ 1603-103).⁷ The Nonprofit Corporation Act sets a default one-year term where the documents stay silent and lets a board split into classes with non-uniform terms (§ 702).¹¹ Maine sets no statutory term limit on association directors under either statute; any term limit is documentary and binds only where adopted.

For condominiums, the Condominium Act governs declarant control and the handoff to an owner-elected board. A declarant-control period may not run past seven years for a condominium in which the declarant reserved development rights, or past five years otherwise, and it ends no later than sixty days after the declarant conveys seventy-five percent of the units to other owners (§ 1603-103(d)).⁷ The executive board may not act for the association to elect its own members or to set the qualifications, powers, duties, or terms of board members, though it may fill a vacancy for the rest of a term (§ 1603-103(b)).⁷ A non-condominium association has no statutory declarant-control regime; any developer-control period there is documentary.

D. Onboarding and ongoing qualification duties

Maine requires no certification and no education for association directors. It has no answer to Florida’s rule that a newly elected or appointed condominium director must, within ninety days, both sign a written acknowledgment of having read the governing documents and finish an approved four-hour certification course.¹⁵ A Maine director’s onboarding duties are documentary and practical, not statutory.

Conflict-of-interest disclosure runs through the corporate layer. The Nonprofit Corporation Act covers director and officer conflict-of-interest transactions, and it shields a director from liability for an action taken if the director met the general standard and any conflicted transaction was fair to the corporation or approved under the conflict-of-interest provision (13-B M.R.S. § 717, § 718).¹⁴

The standard of care comes from the Nonprofit Corporation Act, § 717. 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 way the director reasonably believes serves the corporation’s best interests; the section also lets a director rely on competent officers, counsel, accountants, and committees.¹⁶ For condominiums, that corporate standard reaches the executive board through § 1601-108, and the Condominium Act separately makes a declarant a fiduciary for unit owners as to the actions of a declarant-appointed or declarant-dominated board (§ 1603-103(a)).⁷ Common law supplements both.

Section 4: Recent legislative and judicial activity

A. Recent bills

One recent enactment touches the bigger question of who governs Maine’s common-interest communities, though it changes no director qualification on its own. LD 760, a Resolve of the 132nd Legislature, came from Senator Mark Lawrence, who represents District 35 in southern York County.¹⁷

No bill in the 131st Legislature (2023-2024) or the 132nd (2025-2026) amended the Maine Condominium Act or the Maine Nonprofit Corporation Act on director qualifications, board composition, director eligibility, or director removal.

B. Recent appellate rulings

No published opinion of the Maine Supreme Judicial Court, sitting as the Law Court, has squarely decided director eligibility, director removal, or board composition in the past thirty-six months. The Law Court is Maine’s only appellate court; the State has no intermediate appellate court, and appeals run straight from the Superior Court to the Law Court.¹⁹ The closest recent governance decision — out of a long-running fight over declarant and board mismanagement at a Bar Harbor condominium — turned on a procedural question, not a director-qualification one.

C. Active legislative debates

The live debate is structural. LD 760’s study commission (Resolve 2025, chapter 167) is weighing whether Maine should adopt a comprehensive common-interest-community statute based on the Uniform Common Interest Ownership Act — a step that, if the Legislature later takes it, could add statutory director-qualification and removal rules where the State is silent now.¹⁸

Section 5: National positioning and related coverage

Maine is a moderate-touch state for condominiums and a covenant-first state for planned communities that are not condominiums. Its condominium statute is a Uniform-Condominium-Act framework with an executive board and a declarant-control regime, but director eligibility, terms, and disqualification rest mainly on the governing documents and, for the incorporated association, the Maine Nonprofit Corporation Act. That puts Maine between heavy-touch states such as Florida — which requires certification or education, caps service at eight years (no more than four consecutive two-year terms without a two-thirds supermajority), and automatically disqualifies delinquent owners and certain felons⁴ — and light-touch states such as Iowa, where eligibility is essentially documentary. For a multi-state operator, Maine’s condominium framework looks familiar, but its non-condominium communities have no governing statute, and appellate research runs through the Maine Supreme Judicial Court sitting as the Law Court rather than an intermediate court.¹⁹ Maine sets no director certification requirement and no director term limit.

HOA Weekly updates its Maine Director Qualifications coverage every quarter, as the Legislature and the Maine Supreme Judicial Court act. Federal frameworks rarely dictate director qualifications, but Maine associations still answer to federal law — the Fair Housing Act, the ADA, the FDCPA, the SCRA, and OTARD — across their broader operations.

Footnotes

1. Maine Condominium Act, 33 M.R.S. § 1603-103 (executive board members and officers; declarant control) ↩
2. Maine Condominium Act, 33 M.R.S. § 1601-102 (applicability; post-1983 condominiums and reference to sections 560 through 587) ↩
3. Maine Nonprofit Corporation Act, 13-B M.R.S. § 101 et seq. (Title 13-B chapters) ↩
4. Fla. Stat. § 718.112(2)(d) (Florida condominium director eligibility: delinquency and felony disqualification, term limits, certification) ↩
5. Maine Condominium Act, 33 M.R.S. ch. 31 (§ 1601-101 to § 1604-118), table of sections ↩
6. Maine Condominium Act, 33 M.R.S. § 1601-103(13) (definition of “executive board”) ↩
7. Maine Condominium Act, 33 M.R.S. § 1603-103 (executive board; minimum three members and majority unit owners; staggered terms; declarant control period and 7/5-year limits and 75% conveyance trigger; subsection (a) declarant fiduciary; subsection (b) board may not set its own qualifications) ↩
8. Maine Condominium Act, 33 M.R.S. § 1601-104 (variation by agreement) ↩
9. Maine Condominium Act, 33 M.R.S. § 1601-108 (supplemental general principles of law, including law of corporations) ↩
10. Maine Nonprofit Corporation Act, 13-B M.R.S. § 701 (board of directors; residency and membership not required unless documents require; articles or bylaws may prescribe other qualifications) ↩
11. Maine Nonprofit Corporation Act, 13-B M.R.S. § 702 (number not less than three; one-year default term; classes of directors) ↩
12. Maine Nonprofit Corporation Act, 13-B M.R.S. § 704 (removal of directors; two-thirds member vote, lesser threshold permitted but not below majority) ↩
13. Maine Nonprofit Corporation Act, 13-B M.R.S. § 704-A (removal of directors by judicial proceeding in the Superior Court) ↩
14. Maine Nonprofit Corporation Act, 13-B M.R.S. § 717 and § 718 (general standards for directors; conflict-of-interest transactions) ↩
15. Fla. Stat. § 718.112(2)(d) (Florida newly elected director acknowledgment and certification course requirement) ↩
16. Maine Nonprofit Corporation Act, 13-B M.R.S. § 717 (good faith; ordinarily prudent person standard; best interests; reliance on others) ↩
17. Testimony of Senator Mark Lawrence (District 35), LD 760, Joint Standing Committee on Housing and Economic Development ↩
18. LD 760, 132nd Legislature, Resolve 2025, chapter 167 (bill status and text); see also Joint Standing Committee on Housing and Economic Development, Enacted Law Summaries (LD 760, Resolve 2025, c. 167; 12-member commission; report due December 1, 2026) ↩
19. State of Maine Judicial Branch, Courts (Supreme Judicial Court sitting as the Law Court is the appellate court; Superior Court and District Court are trial courts) ↩
20. Maples v. Compass Harbor Village Condominium Ass’n, 2025 ME 19 (Maine Supreme Judicial Court, decided Feb. 25, 2025; District Court disclosure proceeding required under 33 M.R.S. § 1603-117) ↩
21. Maples v. Contorakes, BCD-CV-18-02, Order Following Bench Trial (Business and Consumer Docket; damages of $134,900 to Maples and $106,801 to Brown for declarant and board mismanagement) ↩