Bill would have put Massachusetts condo records on a 10-day clock, with a $100-a-day fine
Bill would have put Massachusetts condo records on a 10-day clock, with a $100-a-day fine
2026-09-10 · Massachusetts · Legislation · Did not pass
What happened. A bill that would have imposed the first statutory records-production deadline in Massachusetts condominium law died in the 194th General Court. It is not law, and the qualifier matters: Massachusetts still has no deadline at all.
The provisions appeared in identical form in S.980 (Sen. Lydia Edwards) and H.4826 (Rep. Meghan K. Kilcoyne), each as sections 2 and 3 of an eight-section rewrite of M.G.L. c. 183A.1 Formal sessions ended on 31 July 2026 with neither bill reaching a vote.
The clock the bill would have set
Section 2 would have added a new c. 183A §10(c)(4)(vi) splitting the deadline by how the association is run:
- 10 business days for a self-managed organization of 50 units or fewer
- 5 business days for an organization with a managing agent
Delivery would have had to be electronic, over secure HTTPS, and at no cost to the owner — a direct answer to the per-page copying charge, which is the practical barrier in most Massachusetts records disputes.
The penalty
A $100.00 fine for each day past the applicable deadline. The House version, H.4826, went one step further than the Senate text and named the forum: the fine would have been enforceable in small claims court.2
That is a meaningful drafting choice. A penalty with no named forum leaves an owner to file in Superior Court or the Land Court, where the cost of enforcement exceeds the penalty. A small claims route makes the fine self-enforcing.
Engineering reports
Section 3 would have added §10(c)(4)(vii), requiring disclosure of architectural reports and engineering studies — the category most often withheld from Massachusetts unit owners, and the one that matters most when a building has a structural problem.
What the exceptions tell you
The carve-outs in section 3 are narrower than boards may expect, and the two versions differed in a way that shows what was being negotiated.
Both versions excluded attorney-client privileged material, legal opinions, personnel discipline records, and contract-negotiation and litigation-strategy documents. But the House text, H.4826, made the attorney-client exclusion temporal: privileged material would have been withheld only until the litigation concluded, and disclosable afterwards.
Read against a real fact pattern, that is a substantial difference. An association that obtains a structural engineering report through counsel during a construction-defect claim can, today, treat the report as privileged work product indefinitely. Under the House text, the report becomes an owner-accessible record once the case ends.
What the law actually requires right now
M.G.L. c. 183A §10(c) requires the organization of unit owners to keep records and make them “available for inspection” by unit owners and their authorised representatives. What it does not contain:
- any deadline, in days or otherwise
- any cap on copying or retrieval charges
- any penalty for refusal or delay
- any express entitlement to electronic delivery
- any express category for engineering or architectural reports
The remedy for a refused request is a suit to compel inspection. That asymmetry — a right with no timetable and no penalty — is the gap both bills were drafted to close, and it is unchanged.
Operationally, for boards and managers
Two things follow, and neither depends on legislation.
The bylaws and trust instrument are the operative deadline. Many Massachusetts condominium trusts contain their own records provisions, sometimes with response times. Where they do, that is the enforceable clock, and it is worth knowing what it says before a request arrives rather than after.
A documented internal policy is cheaper than a dispute. The bill's structure — a defined response window, electronic delivery, a stated list of what is and is not produced — is a reasonable template for a board policy even though it is not a requirement. Associations that adopted one in anticipation of the bill have no reason to withdraw it.
What to watch next
Records access has been filed in multiple Massachusetts sessions and is among the most likely provisions to be refiled separately in the 195th General Court, which convenes in January 2027. The two-tier structure — a shorter deadline where a professional manager is in place — is the distinctive feature to watch for, because it is the drafting compromise that let the bill clear a committee.
Nothing here predicts how any individual records dispute comes out. It describes what the filed text said and what the statute currently does not.
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