Indiana HOA Rules: Homeowner Rights, Selective Enforcement, Records Requests & Disputes (Webinar)

Your HOA can tell you what mailbox to buy, where you can park, and whether you can build a shed, but it cannot invent power out of thin air. We sit down for a practical, no-nonsense talk on Indiana HOA rules and homeowners association rights, with one guiding question: what do the governing documents say, and what does Indiana law say?

We break down the core HOA documents every homeowner should understand, including CC&Rs, bylaws, and articles of incorporation, and why the board’s authority is supposed to be limited by those texts and proper procedure. From there, we move into the rights that keep an association honest: transparency, participation, and fairness. You will hear exactly why an HOA records request should be made in writing, what kinds of records you can ask for (minutes, budgets, contracts, enforcement history), and how good documentation can change the outcome of a dispute.

A big part of the conversation tackles selective enforcement and harassment, because that’s where HOA conflicts get personal fast. We talk through how to prove selective enforcement with time stamped photos and enforcement records, how appeals and dispute resolution steps like mediation or arbitration often fit into the process, and why court is usually the last resort. We also respond to a question that makes homeowners’ blood run cold: can an HOA tow your car from your own driveway because it “isn’t driven enough”?

If you want fewer surprises and more control in your next HOA conflict, listen now, then subscribe, share this with a neighbor, and leave a review so more homeowners can find it.

Here are links to my website and other social media.

The Law Office of Mark Nicholson

The Nicholson Nugget

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Transcript

Purpose And Legal Disclaimers

SPEAKER_01 0:53

And what homeowners need to know about the options dealing with uh home appreciation, the HOA. Basically, this is an educational uh presentation. Uh it's not really legal advice to your specific situation, uh, and it doesn't you know create an attorney-client relationship. Uh, everything, obviously, since it's being recorded, will not be like a presence information, attorney-client privilege information. Um, and every case is different, so there's that issue too. Uh, but I'm gonna briefly talk about what a HOA is since I'm assuming everybody here is a member of an HOA, so you already know kind of what it is, what documents control that, what rights you have as a homeowner, which I think that's the main thing that people really want to know. Um, how the rules are created, what you can do if there's a dispute, which I think that's another big one. Um so hopefully the goal of this is to have you better informed about and better prepared to deal with uh your HOA. That's the kind of the goal with that. Now, obviously, the good part about having an HOA, excuse me, it helps with keeping the neighborhood kind of looking good, uh, common areas being maintained. You know, you might have a club, might have a pool house, park, landscaping, all that kind of stuff like that. And they do come with rules, as you know. Um, by the way, if you're if you want to ask questions, uh just interrupt me and say, hey, I have a question. Uh, because I two people don't have their cameras on, so I can't see if you raise your hand. Um, there may be a raise your hand button you can do. Um if you're able to see it online, I can see a little hand feature. But otherwise than that, just go ahead and interrupt and say, hey, I have a question or I don't understand something. So I want it to be very interactive. I don't want you to have to wait until the very end to try to remember your question because I know when I was in classes and things like that, someone was saying something, I hate to wait until the end because then I would forget. Um, so don't think you're gonna be rude by interrupting and say, Hey, hey, Mark, I have a question. Um anyway, um, these rules can affect you know the color you can paint your house. I live in HLA,

What An HOA Is For

SPEAKER_01 3:05

so I know that we have to have certain kind of mailboxes, or they get upset where you can park your car, which I think that's another one that people have issues with. Also, the issue of maintaining your lawn, you gotta kind of know what some of the things are that shed. That was a big one in ours. You know, we couldn't have sheds, they didn't want you to have sheds, and you couldn't have a privacy fence if your house was facing one side of the street, just all these little rules. Um, now, under Indiana law, the homeowners associations are generally governed by the Indiana Homeowners Association Act uh when organized as a nonprofit corporation and the Indiana Nonprofit Corporations Act. Those are basically the two uh entities or the two statutes that govern a homeowners association. Real briefly, I'll let you know what a homeowner's association is because you guys already know they're a private organization that manages residential community. I'm not gonna spend a lot of time on that because I think everybody here knows what that is. Firstly, I won't spend a lot of time about the board either, because I'm assuming everyone knows about the purpose of the board, which is uh they do not have uh unlimited power, but their authority does come through the governing documents and also parts of Indiana law. So when you're trying to understand whether the HOA can do something, the first question is usually what do the documents say? And then the second question is what does Indiana law say? Those are the two things you need to think of. What does your documents say? And what do I have a question? Okay. Um then the role of the HOA is is is based on their decision-making uh uh body for the association. Uh board members are usually uh homeowners who volunteer or who are elected to serve in that capacity. Their job is supposed to be the best interest of the association as a whole, uh, and that can include, which often most of them do, managing the budget, collecting assessments, maintaining common areas, hiring vendors uh or management companies, enforcing the rules, keeping records, uh, providing notices to homeowners, holding meetings, voting on association businesses, uh business. Uh, but again, like I said, the power of the board is not unlimited. Uh they're supposed to follow the governing documents, follow proper procedure, and must act fairly, and must apply the rules consistently. I know that was another issue that I've heard some people complain about is the rules are not being applied uh fairly. Common problems happen when the homeowners feel like the board is acting like it can do whatever it wants. And you know, I've been the victim of that where the board seemed like they just would, you know, do whatever they want, but with the proper people in place and following the rules, that kind of limits the ability to think the board can do whatever they want. So if you live in a community, which I'm assuming everyone here does live in a community where there is uh a homeowners association, some of the things that you need to

The Documents That Control Power

SPEAKER_01 6:20

look at are the declaration of covenants, conditions, and restrictions, often called the C C and Rs, to see exactly what they dictate for people to be able to do on the board. That is the main rule book for the property. They can cover things like lawn care, parking, exterior damage changes, fences signs, parking of vehicles. Um when you buy your property, you're supposed to be able to get a copy of this CCNR. Uh and by doing that, you are agreeing to the terms in there. And the second document is the bylaws. The bylaws they usually explain how the HOA operates. They mainly uh cover like elections, voting, meetings, notice requirements, board powers, officers, quorum requirements. Third document, articles of incorporation. Those are are filled with the state of Indiana if the HOA is organized as a corporation. Uh together, these documents they form the foundation of the HOA's authority. So if you have a problem with the HOA, the best way to go about it is start with those documents to make sure that what you think they're doing is improper, is improper because it doesn't follow their CCNRs, the bylaws, or something in the articles and corporations. Now, obviously, because you're a homeowner, you do have rights. Uh and part of those rights are the transparency, participation, and fairness. Those are three main rights you have. And one of the most important rights is the right to access the HO, the official HOA records. So that is related to the transparency. And that includes the meeting minutes, financial records, contracts, budgets, and other association documents. You have the right to be able to view those documents. If you want to know whether HO whether HOA is spending money properly, whether the board is following the procedure, or whether they're making certain decisions that were actually approved, you have access to all those documents. Obviously, you should make the request in writing. That keeps it legit so you they can't get in there and say that they never knew you wanted to make a request. If you made it orally, they could, oh well, we didn't know, da-da-da. So make it in writing, specify the records that you want, keep a copy of your request in case they say they lost it, and keep record of whether they respond and how they respond. It's a document is important because if things get worse, you have proof that you contacted them and tried to get this resolved without going to any kind of legal recourse, and it did not work. Another thing you have is the right to attend meetings and vote. That's a homeowner's right. You get to vote, you get to participate in the association because you live there. This includes voting on board elections and voting on certain major issues. They're usually required to give notice uh to members of the HOA. Uh, and this matters because you need a fair opportunity to be able to attend, ask questions, and vote. You need to be able to do all that. Um, if the HOA is making these major decisions without proper notice, without form, and without the required vote, these decisions may be challengeable and potentially may be illegal. That's why your bylaws are important to know. And the bar should explain certain things that they should explain, like how the meetings are called, how much notice must be given, who can vote, what percentage is needed, what counts as a quorum, and if the board is not following those procedures, that may be a serious legal issue, a serious challenge to the thing that they do if they're not following those. That's why

Your Rights To Records And Votes

SPEAKER_01 10:40

it's important to be able to see those documents. Another big one is protection against selective enforcement. Um I think one of the biggest complaints I've heard over the years is selective enforcement. Selective enforcement basically means that the HOA enforces a rule against one homeowner but ignores the same issue against another homeowner. For example, uh they the homeowner, HOA signs for a parking, a work vehicle in your driveway. But five other owners have the same similar vehicles in their driveway, but nothing happens to them. Or the HOA fights you for a fence, but other homeowners have similar fences and the board does nothing. That was the issue with the uh what do you call it? Uh shed. Some people were building sheds, they said sheds were not allowed, but some people had sheds and you're not doing anything. Mailboxes. Told me I had to get a uniform mailbox, but a couple of houses down, they had these little fancy, really nice email boxes. They had had uh flowers in them pots and just all that. Selective enforcement. Yeah, go ahead.

SPEAKER_02 12:04

Um reach out to you, obviously, you know that. Uh collective enforcement is a big issue for a lot of people, and uh and I've been on the phone with many people uh over the last six weeks and prepare for this, and some of them wanted me to ask those questions. I told them it would be reported or whatever. There's a lot of people who have uh um feel like we're targeted. I know I'm targeted because when I see something, and for uh lack of a better term, I I raise my hand and call bullshit, and when I do that, it's like, oh, this guy's gonna get what we said, so we're gonna every every little tic-tac thing we're gonna go or we're gonna make up something, you know. Uh, so how can you go to court to prove selective enforcement? Because obviously the HOA and the board members are gonna say, no, it's equal across everything, but I myself, I have proof from conversations that are on through text or email. Satan's oh, well, we can't do this, we try to do this, but it seemed like with me for nine months they made my life a living, flipping hell. I mean, CPS was called to my kid, uh, the Board of Hells had to come out over my car, and there's nothing wrong with my innocent mother, and you know, just like having an ugly wife or an ugly husband, that's not difficult to have an ugly cargo drive. So, how do we go to stop that? And also, uh, like I lost a job over over it, it happened to go to court because it was a new job. So, how can we recoup monetarily for one, and two, to stop the harassment? I think that's a big question people want to answer.

SPEAKER_01 14:06

Okay. So that's what I'm where I was getting ready to go to next. Is if you believe that you're being singled out, basically documentation is key. And it sounds like uh you have the documentation, Mr. Neely, that you need to be able to prove what they what they've done. But for people that don't, basically one of the big things you can do when it comes to documentation is take photos. So let's use this car situation example, kind of like I was using with the with the work vehicle. So if you have uh a car that they think is ugly, which is very subjective, and that they take pictures of it and say, oh, look, it's it's in it's in your driveway or it's violating, and you go to uh your neighbors or you know, two doors down, whatever, and you see their car is similar and it's parked in the same manner. You take a picture of that, boom. So on uh April 25th at you know, 1017, here's a picture of this car, boom, similar to mine, parked the

Selective Enforcement And How To Prove

SPEAKER_01 15:10

same way. These people weren't cited, right? So you save the notice, right? You save your email communication that you have with them, and then also don't forget you have access to these documents, right? Records requests. So then you can request the records of everybody that's been cited, you know, in the last 30 days, whatever, you know, your time frame, to see if your neighbor, two doors down, has been cited for the same thing, like when you took the picture, right? Because you you took the picture proving that this person is similarly situated as you, and then when you get those records and you show this person wasn't ever cited, now you got selective enforcement. Um and that can be the defense against any action, or not any, but the if the action they try to take against you, because you have proof that they did not cite somebody for doing the same thing. And this is not confidential. So they can't say, oh, these are confidential records, we can't we can't share. I mean, I guess they could try to say that, but that's but that would be in violation um uh of the rules because it's supposed to be transparent and things like that. You know, you have a copy of those rules. Um, so um you should be able to get that. Then if you do go to court and you win, oftentimes the prevailing party, when it comes to the situation of homeowner associations, ends up uh getting the attorney fees paid. Now, courts do like to see this resolved prior to coming to court, so it shouldn't be automatically, it should be kind of like an appeal process within your homeowners' documents to get in and say, okay, I'm appealing this and my ground, select the enforcement, whatever. If that doesn't work, maybe you go to mediation. Maybe there's an arbit arbitration clause in that you have to do before you even go to court. So you want to try to do all those things, and the last resort is then going to court.

SPEAKER_02 17:09

All right, well, we're taking you the small claims report or blazzy, blazing, lousy. But you know, with the records request, there's a lot of people that I've talked to in the last week, myself included, that you know, uh me and my wife both had cancer, I lost a job, we had like over two million dollars in debt. So bankruptcy, uh they were aware of this, they got a notification, they didn't attend the 529 meeting. But every notice I get in OVP, they keep saying post petition. And I reached out to them and said, Hey, you know we called bankruptcy, you guys got a notice. There is no such thing as I didn't show up, but he's still old as already had a petition. And I have records of paying dues that they never credited to my account, but yet I got late late fees and a lien against my house. I have a lien against my house currently because of their record keeping. And they won't I've had uh HOA people say, Oh, well, we're gonna credit your account and your dues for this year are gonna just be null and boy because you pay. Because the money order's no good. It it went three years without being cashed. And now the new board is like, well, that has nothing to do with us, but yet they still want me to pay interest and fees, and I gotta lean against my house over something I paid years ago. And they can't they can't give me, they haven't gave my attorney, my bankruptcy attorney, like where is these this mysterious three, four thousand dollar fees coming from? Because that's like if I didn't pay dues for ten years, and that's that's just not true. So they don't like don't want to provide that information.

SPEAKER_01 19:05

Yeah, so so in a situation like that, basically it sounds like if you have documentation of the board saying they're gonna apply that payment or they're gonna waive the fees, that would be documentation that we you would use to get there and and tell the board, that you know, the current board is this is the agreement, this is you know, here's the documentation that shows that. And then, you know, um follow what the HOA. Yeah, and the management company. Uh, you know, this is what everybody said, and then follow what the uh the the documents say in regards to that. If if if there's a dispute, your CCNR or the bylaw or something should get in there and tell you exactly what you do when there's a dispute. So if that means that you have to do some kind of appeal and it goes to an appeal panel, or you got to go to mediation, then you would write and click, okay, let's go to mediation, or if it's if it's arbitration, it's like okay, let's go to arbitration. And obviously, if they don't follow that procedure, then you're

Appeals Mediation Arbitration Then Court

SPEAKER_01 20:05

left with you would have to go to court, right? And then if they don't respond to your request to go to mediation or go to arbitration, you know, as a document, then you know, if they don't respond at all, then I mean you gotta go to court. So there is an avenue for you to uh to uh remedy the situation, um, but they have to be a they have to um want to be a participant in that. They have to want to. If they don't, then your yeah, your remedy is to go to court. But I would say based upon the information that you've given me, for example, would be follow what the if you haven't done this part already, follow what the bylaws or the CCR or whatever they say about when there's a dispute, what do you do? If that's an appeal, just follow that avenue, and then if all those avenues fail, then you would go to court.

SPEAKER_02 20:54

Well, another problem too, Mark, is we go to uh management companies, like I change my socks. So you you get an agreement with one, and then posts are gone like a fart in the wind, and then you got um Julie that just started, she doesn't have any idea what the hell you're talking about, and then you gotta start all this process all over low all over again, and it's just crazy. So that brings me to another question. Is harassment and selective enforcement two different things, or is that uh like a one argument but that has two sections to it?

SPEAKER_01 21:37

Well, uh obviously they you know it it depends on what they're doing.

SPEAKER_02 21:43

Um if well for you said a mailbox, right? HOAs are big on these mailboxes. And I I talked to uh a lady today, she's or yesterday, she has actually been here from the very beginning. I'm like one of the OGs but she's Actually, been here even longer than me. I tottered one year. Our dues now are $400 a year. Which comparison isn't bad because I know that farm over $1,500, $2,000. But anyway, I got $400 worth of certified mail about my mailbox being. It needed to be replaced, it needed to be doing this. Every time I got the notice, and I I had the emails going back all these years. I'm like, what's wrong with my mailbox? It needs to be re-lettered. Well, what it is, is you know how a lot of the mailboxes is actually two mailboxes on one post. So eventually they sued me and it went to court. And up to leading to small claims court, I told the guys like, hey, that's not that's not even my that's not my address. But they kept sending to me, $400. We went to court. I I counted sued them. I won like $1,400 for their harassment, and it was all said and done. The guy admitted said it was sent in error. But two weeks later, guess what I got in the mail? I was bagged on my letter about my damn mailbox. Mailbox that was in question was the house across the street that had been foreclosed on and nobody lived in there for like nine months. But yet, I'm the one who back then I had to sign for the envelope that I got this, and you know, it was like I got to know this FedEx guy by name. He was coming to my house so much, and it was over the same issue. So is that harassment? I mean, I lost wages to going to have to leave work early to go to court, and you know, it it still happens. I I still get letters about my mailbox.

SPEAKER_01 23:48

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 23:49

It's not my mailbox, it's the other person's mailbox.

SPEAKER_01 23:52

Right. So, you know, so you got a couple things,

Harassment Versus Selective Enforcement

SPEAKER_01 23:55

like you said, getting back to your original question, is there's the issue of harassment, which is that can be in any any kind of form. And you know, it may not even be them writing you up, right? It may just be you keep getting notices. You know, that that that could be like a a a form of harassment because they never really write you up, you just keep getting notices. That's harassment. But then the other one could be where um is the uh issue of selective enforcement because you get in there and you look and you see that someone has the same exact, I'll just you keep me the same exact mailbox as you do, they don't get a citation, but you get the citation. So now you have selective enforcement, but it could also be harassment too, because that's it, like you're harassing me or you're discriminating against me because you know I'm you know Muslim or something, you know, you don't like the religion, so you keep doing you know, you don't like the way I look, you know, whatever it is. So now you have issue of you know harassment, discrimination, selective enforcement. So it just depends on some of the the reasons why they're doing it. Are they doing it as selective enforcement, or they're doing it as because this over here person over here is their favorite, so I'm not gonna mess with him because this person is is a relative of mine, or are they doing it, you know, against you because you know, uh because they're harassing you.

SPEAKER_02 25:15

So is that something difficult to prove and for?

SPEAKER_01 25:22

Well, it it I mean i uh uh it it it the difficulty is gonna depend on why what the reason is. You show I'm saying that's what's gonna be the difficulty. Um because if if the reason why they do it is because you know they don't that this person over here is a relative of their or they're their favorite or they work together or something like that, you might be able to prove that pretty easy because it'll be like, well, you know, that's his cousin over there. And you know, you do a deposition. Is this your guy, your cousin? Then yeah, it's a cousin. Well, that's a family member. That's why he's not fighting them. Boom. Now, you know, so it just kind of depends on what the reason is. If the reason is because they just don't like the way you look and they've never told anybody that, yeah, that's gonna be harder to prove. But uh, I know we don't have too much time though. I want to uh somebody has a question, I think, uh send me a message here. I want to see what it says here. Um, one reason I'm here is that our HOA has apprenticed like that they might have the ability to tow someone's car from their own driveway if it isn't driven on a regular basis. I could possibly understand a car on blocks or company's junk car, but otherwise this makes no sense to me. Is this legal? So, yeah, they would they would have uh I I think they would be very open to a lawsuit or following the procedure if they tow someone's car in the driveway if it isn't driven on a regular basis. There's no legal requirement that you have to drive your car uh you know on a regular basis. They, you know, and who's gonna sit there and enforce that you haven't driven your car?

Can An HOA Tow Your Car

SPEAKER_01 27:05

Right? I mean, are they gonna sit there and monitor you 24-7 because you could have drove it last night to go to stake and shake and then drove it and park it back home? You know, uh I had a homeowner associate say that my car uh was broke down. I'm like, who said it was broke down? Who got in my car and drove it to find out it didn't start? Because it does start, it does work. Then they were sending that one, right? They just didn't like the way it looked because it was old and I fell in love with it, and I didn't want to get rid of it until it was between my wife and the car, and I chose my wife. So she called Goodwill to come pick it up and take it. I cried, like I was losing a child. But the issue here, they're taking your property. I would be surprised if a tow company would agree to that, but if they did, uh, yeah, that that would open them up to a lot of liability because they're they're gonna have to demonstrate one that there's you have some legal obligation to drive a your car, because I'm sure that's not in your uh C C and R or anything like that, not in any of those documents that say you gotta drive your car once every 24 hours. So that's not in there. Um so they would have no legal basis to say you're violating some rule if they only have that rule set, and people would have to vote on it to get it in place.

SPEAKER_02 28:22

So but I want to be respectful when it comes to voting now the board members, you know, because I made a big thing back in October when they were trying to you know float this idea about parking. I I agree with not parking in your yard. I get all that. But if you have, you know, like me, I have seven kids, and you know, they all drive. So their thing is, well, you just need to park in the garage, or you need to find another way to park, or you need a downsize. They never gave an alternative to how to do the parking, but to me, there was no vote. They talked about it, but they made it sound like, well, we voted on it. No, anybody had talked about there was no vote. It was just the five boardmen, four board members that got together and said, All right, we legally vetted this, and it's now law, and they say it's not an HOA rule, it's an actual uh fake statue, which some of it is, but these security guys come like thieves in the night at three o'clock in the morning, and they ticket people's cars, threaten to tow them, and all this good stuff when there's no kids walking at three o'clock in the morning. There's no handicap walking at three o'clock in the morning, so it's a non-issue. They don't come during the day, you only come between the hours of like 2 a.m. to 4 a.m. And they live here. And I've gone, I've made videos, I drove through the security company owners edition, and the last time I drove by there two days ago, his neighbor, and he was home, was parked in his yard working on his car, which now is supposed to be illegal. But just like I told other people, when you're a cop and you have to make a decision between neighbors, you hate doing that because you live there. You don't want a crap where you sleep because you're gonna make one neighbor mad and you're gonna make one neighbor your best friend. Well, that neighbor you made mad could make your life live in hell, call you work, make up stuff, and I just think it was a bad idea to hire a security company that actually lives here on the property, and they're only targeting 30 people.

SPEAKER_01 30:52

Yeah. Yeah, well, that that yeah, that definitely sounds like a selective enforcement where you could uh kind of demonstrate that you know the reason why they're doing it is because this person lives next to them and you would have documentation showing you got citations, they didn't. So that that seems like that would be pretty easy to uh to prove. I do want to be respectful

Final Takeaways And Free Consultation

SPEAKER_01 31:10

of everyone's time because it was scheduled for 30 uh minutes at 1033. Uh it looks like there's three people on. Uh I have you know Dean, Michael Owens, and of course you, Mr. Stephen McNeely, uh, and then whoever the third person is. Uh I am going to waive, if if you know you want to schedule a consultation or you want to learn more, you can go to my website. There's an article that has the which you probably already saw, that's how you got the link, that um that has more information about the homeowner association's rights. And then if you want to schedule a consultation, I will waive waive the consultation fee so you can uh learn more about your homeowners association uh rights. So I wasn't able to get through the whole presentation, but I hope I was able to answer some questions, especially on the big issue of selective enforcement and the other one about them towing your car, that that would not not be legal and and they would be subject to uh some litigation on that one. So I hope everyone has a happy and safe weekend, and hope everybody was safe yesterday. I know there was some storming going on that happened yesterday. So I appreciate you, Mark. Well, I appreciate you coming up with the idea. So this is all thanks to him because he he kind of came up with the idea of talking to a lot of people and about this and spreading the word. So I I really appreciate your work on that. So take care.