In my prior “Blog” entitled “Former Board Members Must Turn Over Association Files”, we discussed Directors’ responsibilities and requirements to turn over their respective HOA’s, Condo’s and Co-op’s “Official Records” when their term as a member of the Association’s Board of Directors has terminated. Part II of this Blog discusses the advisability of X-Directors taking reasonable measures to protect them, before timely relinquishing the Official Records in their possession.
The first Cardinal Rule, as far as this attorney is concerned, is that you should not provide copies of anything which you feel may be incriminating or involves a breach of your duty as a Director, without first consulting your own attorney (who is not the Association’s present or past attorney or law firm). The reasons for this are many, and should be discussed with your attorney at that time. Importantly, this is NOT advising you to violate Florida law by not timely providing the Official Records to the Association. Merely that you should get legal advice before doing so, if you are concerned about any future exposure to liability for your or the Board’s actions while you were a Director.
This attorney’s second Cardinal Rule is not to give up anything without keeping a copy for you. Once you give the originals away and have no copies, you have no protection whatsoever from future unreasonable, irresponsible and false allegations against you. The first step to protect oneself by keeping copies, should not take place when it is time to relinquish those records. It should start when first elected to the Board of Directors, or immediately if you have not already done so. This involves saving and keeping Association documents and communications segregated from all other personal information and documents.
Keeping with the KISS principal, one can create a separate subdirectory on his or her computer’s hard drive in which only Association related documents and communications are kept. If you have printed copies of Association related documents, keep them in separate files, and if possible in a separate file drawer. If you keep all documents and communications regarding the Association in these two locations, then turning over all Association related documents should be quite easy. For example, all of the printed documents can be scanned and copied to their respective subdirectories for Association related documents on your computer’s hard drive. Once correctly scanned and the results verified, you can shred the original documents. If you do not want to scan the printed documents, then make copies, or have copies made, of them, when it is time to turn them over to the Association.
Likewise, Association related e-mails can be saved in separate “subdirectories” or files in most e-mail programs, such as Outlook, Gmail, etc. Then whenever you receive or send an e-mail regarding Association business, you can move that e-mail to the email subdirectory for the Association. When it is time to provide copies of the Association’s Official Records, these e-mail subdirectories can be copied to your computer’s subdirectory containing Association related documents, etc. Copies of the computer files containing Association Official Records could be compressed into one or more “Zip files” and sent by e-mail to the Association. You can also simply copy the computer files onto a “thumb drive” and deliver the thumb drive to the Association.
When delivering your copies of the Official Records to the Association, they should be delivered to the Association’s President or the Association’s Corporate Secretary. When you do so, it is IMPORTANT that you bring a simple receipt for the person to sign who will be receiving your copies of the Association’s Official Records. Do not send or leave your copies without first having received a signed receipt.