July 11, 2026

HOA & Condo Dispute Intake Forms: What Attorneys Actually Need on Paper

A homeowner calls your office because the HOA fined them $500 for putting up a shed without approval. Sounds simple enough. Then you learn the association never held the hearing required by its own bylaws. The fine has been accruing daily penalties for six months. The board president lives next door and has a nearly identical shed that nobody has mentioned. And the client just received a letter from the association's attorney threatening to place a lien on the property.

That is a typical HOA dispute — what looks like a minor rule violation on the surface is actually a tangle of contract interpretation, corporate governance, selective enforcement, and potential due process violations. If your intake form only captured the client's name and a one-line description of the problem, you are going to spend the entire first meeting pulling basic facts out of the client instead of analyzing the case. A purpose-built HOA and condo disputes intake form captures all of this before the consultation. Here is what it should include.

Property address, unit information, and ownership details

Start with the property. Full street address, unit or lot number, and the type of community (condominium, planned unit development, cooperative, townhome HOA). These distinctions matter because condominiums are governed by a different statutory framework than HOAs in most states, and cooperatives work differently from both. A condo unit owner holds title to their unit and an undivided interest in common elements. An HOA member owns their lot and the structure on it. A co-op shareholder technically owns shares in a corporation, not real property. Each structure creates different rights and different claims.

Capture how the property is titled, when the client purchased it, and whether the client occupies the unit or rents it out. An absentee owner who rents the unit faces different issues than a resident owner — particularly around tenant-related violations, rental restrictions, and the client's ability to attend board meetings or hearings in person.

Association name and management company

Get the full legal name of the HOA or condominium association, not just the informal name that residents use. "Sunset Ridge" might be how everyone refers to it, but the legal entity might be "Sunset Ridge Community Association, Inc." or "Sunset Ridge Condominium, a New Jersey Condominium." The legal name matters for demand letters, complaints, and lien searches.

Then the management company. In many disputes, the management company is the entity that actually sent the violation notice, imposed the fine, or denied the architectural modification request. They are not the association, but they acted on the association's behalf — and sometimes they acted beyond the authority the board actually gave them. Capture the management company's name, the property manager's name, phone number, and email. You will be corresponding with them, not the board directly, for most of the pre-litigation phase.

Dispute type: classifying the problem correctly

HOA and condo disputes fall into recognizable categories, and your intake form should classify the dispute upfront because the legal analysis differs for each. The main categories your form should cover:

• Assessment disputes — challenges to regular assessments, special assessments, or increases. Was the assessment properly noticed and voted on? Does the governing document require a membership vote for special assessments over a certain dollar amount?
• Maintenance failures — the association is responsible for maintaining common elements (roof, exterior walls, hallways, parking areas) and is not doing it. Water intrusion, structural issues, elevator breakdowns, landscaping neglect.
• Rule enforcement and selective enforcement — the association is enforcing a rule against your client while ignoring the same violation by others. This is one of the most common claims and one of the hardest to prove without documentation.
• Architectural violations — the client made modifications without approval, or the association denied a modification request. What does the architectural review process look like under the CC&Rs? Did the board follow it?
• Board misconduct — self-dealing, failure to hold required elections, refusing to provide financial records, operating without a quorum, awarding contracts to board members' companies. These are governance disputes that often require looking at the nonprofit corporation act, the bylaws, and fiduciary duty case law.
• Discrimination — Fair Housing Act claims, disability accommodation requests denied, familial status discrimination. These shift the case from state contract law into federal civil rights territory.

Getting this classification at intake is not just organizational. It tells you which documents to request, which statutes apply, and whether pre-suit requirements exist. Many states require mediation or arbitration before an HOA lawsuit can be filed. If you do not identify the dispute type at intake, you may miss a mandatory pre-suit step and waste months of work.

CC&Rs, bylaws, and governing document status

Every HOA or condo dispute is fundamentally a contract dispute. The CC&Rs (covenants, conditions, and restrictions), bylaws, and rules and regulations are the contract. Your intake form should ask whether the client has copies of these documents, when they were last amended, and whether the client has reviewed the specific provision at issue. If the client does not have copies, you need to request them from the association — and in most states, the association is required to provide them within a specific timeframe.

This matters beyond just knowing the rules. Governing documents that have not been amended in thirty years may contain provisions that conflict with current state law. A real estate intake form captures property details, but an HOA dispute form needs to go deeper into the governing document framework because the entire case turns on what those documents say and whether the association followed them.

Communications history and fines imposed

Disputes between owners and associations generate paper trails — violation notices, fine letters, hearing notices, board meeting minutes, emails to the property manager, certified mail. Your intake form should ask the client to identify all written communications they have sent or received related to the dispute, and to bring them to the first meeting.

For fines and liens specifically, you need: the original fine amount, the date imposed, whether daily penalties are accruing, the current total owed, and whether the association has filed or threatened to file a lien. Assessment liens in many states are super-priority liens that can take precedence over even a first mortgage up to a statutory limit. A $500 fine that has been accruing penalties for two years can become a $15,000 lien with attorney's fees. The client may not know any of this, which is exactly why your form needs to capture the numbers.

Prior complaints, hearings, and board meeting records

Has the client filed previous complaints with the board? Attended board meetings to raise the issue? Requested a hearing on the fine? What happened? Were minutes taken? Did the board respond in writing? If the case involves selective enforcement, your intake should ask whether the client is aware of other owners with similar violations who were not fined. Names, addresses, and dates are helpful; photographs are even better. The more of this you capture at intake, the less discovery you need later — and the stronger your negotiation position before you ever file anything.

Ask about the client's assessment payment history as well. An association defending against a maintenance claim will almost certainly check whether the complaining owner is current on their assessments. If the client is behind, that is information you need immediately, not during trial preparation.

Requested relief: what does the client actually want?

This question is more important than it sounds. Some clients want the fine rescinded. Others want the board removed. Some want the association to fix the roof, and they do not care about anything else. A few want to sell the unit and just need the lien released so the closing can proceed. Your form should ask what outcome the client is looking for, because it drives the entire litigation strategy. A client who wants to stay in the community for twenty more years needs a different approach than a client who is trying to close a sale next month. If construction law issues are involved — say the association hired a contractor who did defective roof repairs and now every unit has water damage — the dispute may involve third-party claims that expand the case well beyond the owner-association relationship.

The bottom line

HOA and condo disputes are deceptively complicated. They touch property law, contract law, corporate governance, civil rights, and state-specific HOA statutes all at once. A generic legal intake form does not ask about CC&Rs, selective enforcement, or lien status because those questions do not apply to most practice areas. But they are exactly the questions that determine whether your client has a case, what the case is worth, and what procedural steps you need to take before filing. Build those questions into your intake, and you walk into the first consultation ready to give real advice instead of asking for homework.