The numbers inside the super-priority

Section 34-36.1-3.16(b)(2) fixes the priority amount, and Rhode Island's version is unusually generous to associations because it puts fees and costs inside the priority rather than outside it. The lien is prior to the first mortgage

“to the extent of the common expense assessments based on the periodic budget adopted by the association pursuant to § 34-36.1-3.15(a) which would have become due in the absence of acceleration during the six (6) months immediately preceding the foreclosure of the interest of the unit owner”

plus “any costs and reasonable attorney's fees not to exceed two thousand five hundred dollars ($2,500), incurred in the collection of any delinquent assessment…and all costs of foreclosure…said foreclosure costs not to exceed five thousand dollars ($5,000) (for a total aggregate of attorney's fees and costs of seven thousand five hundred dollars ($7,500)).”

Six months of regular assessments, then up to $7,500 of fees and costs, all ahead of the bank. What is not in the priority is set out in subsection (b)(3): “The priority amount…shall not include any amounts attributable to special assessments, late charges, fines, penalties, and interest.” Our Rhode Island collections and liens page covers how the lien arises and what it attaches to.

The notice that costs $7,500 if you skip it

This is the operational point most boards get wrong. Section 34-36.1-3.16(b)(4) requires that once any part of an owner's share of common expenses has been delinquent for at least sixty days, the association “shall first send a notice stating the amount of the delinquency to the unit owner by certified mail, return receipt requested, and first class mail” — and the same notice to the first mortgagee.

Subsection (b)(5) prices the omission precisely: failing to send it “shall not affect the priority of the lien for up to six (6) months common expense assessments, but the priority amount shall not include any costs or attorney's fees.”

Miss the notice and you keep the six months and lose the $7,500. That is the whole penalty, and it is entirely avoidable.

The sale itself: no judge, and a statute that names your newspaper

Section 34-36.1-3.21(a)(1) authorises the association, “through its executive board, to sell the unit of any defaulting unit owner and the benefit and equity of redemption…at public auction upon the premises.” The sequence in (a)(2): written notice of time and place to the owner and first mortgagee by certified mail “at least twenty (20) days prior to publishing said notice”; publication “at least once each week for two (2) successive weeks in a public newspaper”; and “The time of sale shall be at least fifteen (15) days after the publication of the first notice.” The statute then designates, town by town, which newspaper must be used. Junior interest-holders of record get ten days' notice; within seven days after the sale the association must tell the first mortgagee the winning bidder and the bid.

Then the lender's escape hatch, § 3.21(c): the sale is “subject to a thirty (30) day right of redemption running in favor of the holder of the first mortgage or deed of trust of record”, exercised by paying “all assessments due on the unit together with all attorney's fees and costs.”

Thirty days. A lender that does not act inside it loses the mortgage, and Botelho is why.

Three limits that stop this being a collections strategy

Six years, then the lien is gone. Section 34-36.1-3.16(e): “A lien for unpaid assessments is extinguished unless proceedings to enforce the lien are instituted within six (6) years after the full amount of the assessments becomes due.”

Nothing needs to be recorded, which cuts both ways. Section 3.16(d): “Recording of the declaration constitutes record notice and perfection of the lien. No further recordation of any claim of lien…is required but is permitted.” An owner will not find a filing against their unit, because there is none.

Fines and special assessments are outside the priority. They are lienable under § 3.16(a) and foreclosable, but they do not outrank the mortgage. An association whose arrears are mostly fines has a much weaker instrument than the headline suggests.

What the dissent said, and why it still matters

Justice Robinson dissented alone, and his objection was that the majority was reading a drastic consequence into a statute that never states it — a reading he called “far-reaching and indeed radical, if not revolutionary” absent clearer legislative language. That argument lost 4-1 in 2015 and remains the argument a lender would make if it wanted the issue revisited. Nothing in the 2025 or 2026 sessions touched §§ 34-36.1-3.16 or 3.21; the official 2026 subject index of Rhode Island public laws contains no condominium entry at all. The holding stands untouched eleven years on.

What to do with it

For a board: the sixty-day certified-mail notice is the single highest-value item in your collection procedure, and it is a letter. Send it every time, to the owner and the first mortgagee, and keep the receipts.

For an owner in arrears: the instrument that reaches your home does not require anyone to sue you, and there is no judge to ask for time. The practical window is the period before publication, not after.

For anyone valuing a Rhode Island unit: the arrears figure that matters is not the total. It is six months of regular assessments plus up to $7,500, because that is the part that sits ahead of the bank.