The CFPB withdrew its pay-to-pay fee guidance, and Michigan associations still face the statute
The CFPB withdrew its pay-to-pay fee guidance, and Michigan associations still face the statute
2026-09-12 · Michigan · Regulation
What happened. The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau withdrew 67 guidance documents — 8 policy statements, 7 interpretive rules, 13 advisory opinions and 39 other items — published and effective 12 May 2025. The withdrawal spans the Consumer Financial Protection Act, FCRA, FDCPA, ECOA, TILA, EFTA and the Military Lending Act.1
Three withdrawn items reach association collections: the 2024 circular on deceptive and unfair collection of medical debt, the 2023 guidance on time-barred debt, and — the one Michigan boards will feel — the 2022 guidance on pay-to-pay, or “convenience,” fees.
What survives, and it is most of it
The statute and Regulation F are untouched. The 7-in-7 call frequency cap, the validation notice and the dispute procedures all still bind. What is gone is the Bureau's stated interpretation of them.
Withdrawing guidance is not the same as changing law. A practice the 2022 circular described as unlawful can still be unlawful; the Bureau has simply stopped saying so in advance.
Who this applies to in a Michigan association
The distinction matters and boards get it wrong in both directions. An association collecting its own assessments generally is not a “debt collector” under the FDCPA. But the moment it routes a delinquency to an attorney or a collection agency, the FDCPA applies to that party — and in practice to the process the association has set in motion.
The pay-to-pay question, concretely
Charging a co-owner a fee to pay assessments by card or ACH — through a collection agent, a law firm, or a payment portal operated by a management company — was squarely in the CFPB's 2022 crosshairs. It no longer is.
Before a Michigan board treats that as permission, three things are worth being clear about:
- The FDCPA's own prohibition on collecting amounts not authorised by the agreement or permitted by law is unchanged. The circular interpreted that provision; withdrawing the circular did not repeal it. A private plaintiff can still make the argument, and now makes it without the Bureau's framing but also without the Bureau's constraint.
- Michigan has its own law. The Michigan Collection Practices Act and the Michigan Consumer Protection Act are unaffected by anything the CFPB did, and neither has been amended in this window.
- The governing documents are the first question. A fee not authorised by the declaration, the bylaws or a validly adopted resolution is not collectible in Michigan regardless of what any federal agency thinks. That is the analysis to do before the federal one.
Why this pairs badly with something else Michigan courts said
A Michigan association's collections exposure this year is less about federal guidance than about its own records. In Woodside Meadows Condominium Association v Parker, a circuit court entered judgment of no cause of action against an association after finding its records “were not trustworthy” and its practices “deceptive,” and the Court of Appeals affirmed on 12 February 2025.
Charges layered onto a ledger — convenience fees, administrative fees, collection costs — are exactly what makes a ledger unreadable, and an unreadable ledger is what loses a Michigan collection case. The federal guidance question is secondary to that.
What a board can actually do
- List every fee the association or its agents charge on a delinquency, and find the authority for each in the recorded documents. Not the management agreement — the recorded documents.
- Offer at least one no-cost payment method. A convenience fee is easiest to defend where the co-owner had a free alternative.
- Keep collection charges in a separate ledger column from assessments. This is the single cheapest thing on the list and it is what makes an association's accounting survive cross-examination.
- Ask your collection firm what changed in its practice after 12 May 2025. If the answer is “we added fees,” the association is carrying the risk of that decision.
What the state does not offer
No Michigan agency supervises association collections. LARA has no authority over association conduct. The Attorney General's Consumer Protection Team folds condominium associations into a “Landlord/Tenant” complaint category that ranked sixth of its top ten in 2025 — and separately, “Credit/Financial Concerns,” which includes debt collection, ranked second.2
What to watch next
Whether the Bureau replaces any of the withdrawn items. A withdrawal without replacement leaves the question to private litigation and to state law, which in Michigan means circuit court — the same place every other association dispute ends up.
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