Home Owners Association (HOA): How to step down as leader?

The HOA (Home Owners Association - not sure what it’s called in Taiwan; the community that handles money and tasks) voted my wife to be lead a while back and lied about the intensity of the position.

Now that she’s very pregnant, the tasks and stress levels are stacking up – we’re worried for the baby (and ourselves). She wants to step down, but she had to file some legal signatures/stamps to a bank, a couple contracts and some gov’t signature. She’s told that the only way she can quit is if she finds a replacement.

However, no one wants to replace her; it’s like she was tricked into the position. There’s 1 officer on the committee that keeps holding back her signature when we have to pay with some excuse each time, so my wife will get debt collection calls and threats for unpaid services, etc – it’s HER name as responsible, so it’s all scary and depressing.

She wants to step down ASAP. Where do I even begin? Is there such thing as a lawyer that specializes in HOA?

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Maybe the tsuei ma ma foundation can help? Good luck, this sounds really bad and inconsiderate.

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What’s to stop her from just not doing it anymore, and getting a new phone number if necessary or turning that phone off for a couple of months? The HOA can presumably find someone else.

It’s an unpaid position if I remember your previous posts correctly, so what’s the point? Surely she can’t be forced to do the work if she doesn’t want it, especially if she’s pregnant.

I don’t see why she can’t just tell them to stick it.

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Probably the debt collection part. :doh:

I think they need to talk to a lawyer.

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Surely the person wouldn’t make themselves personally liable for any debt in that kind of situation, but only serve as a contact person for the HOA’s creditors?

It doesn’t seem like a very attractive position to begin with, but it seems crazy if there isn’t a “second in command” that everything can be passed to, and if the “leader” isn’t even allowed to quit the unpaid role without paying for a lawyer. What happens if the leader becomes incapacitated, dies, is caught embezzling money, etc.? I presume if they just say they’re quitting and stop doing their job, someone else has to do it, and being heavily pregnant seems a pretty valid reason…

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It’s a horrible job. My wife did it for a few years in our apartment building. Dealing with some of the other residents was not fun. They even nominated me, the foreigner, at one point, but I respectfully declined.

Getting out of that position is not easy. My wife only managed it by moving away. You have my sympathy.

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Sounds horrendous! How big is the community, i.e. how many possible replacements are there? Given her pregnancy at some point she is going to have to request some sort of leave of absence when giving birth and post partum, is there a mechanism for this? If so get a doctors note stating rest required and pull the leave early.

Get a new personal phone number and auto block all except family and friends. Pass the phone number of the person not signing off to the debt collectors and ask them to call that person to resolve the issue.

HOA’s generally have quite detailed rules of conduct and regulations for the election of committee members etc., does she have a copy? If not, given that she is the leader presume she could draw up the new rules and provide an out for herself.

Other option is malicious compliance, just sign off anything that does not financially impact her, make new rules that will adversely impact those that are refusing to let her step down. Stop doing anything or try to find something that provides a conflict of interest and/or makes it impossible for her to legally continue in the role.

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Yea. Basically do a bad enough job until someone gets frustrated enough that its just better if they do it themselves.

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Do it the Taiwanese way. Say you have to resign due to moving to another city.

After you have resigned you just don’t move. Say the reason you had to move changed.

You need to give no more details than that.

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Liability. Everything is under her name.

I like this one too.

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Not bad, sir :wink:

Hmm. That seems like it was a risky decision.

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Yep, the real title for this position is “unpaid scapegoat”. Since you can’t make any real decisions without majority votes, the officers actually hold more power than the leader since the officers can just withhold voting/signing in protest since they don’t have ultimate responsibility.

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We live in a pretty nice condo with 24/hr security. However, some of the officers are just cheap as hell (if you couldn’t tell by the $3 usd/person protest to fix a major leak in a common area you must pass through). They even want to water their own plants (if a tree dies, “someone” will be liable for $80k trees).

They want to get rid of all the guards (which is also for package/uber delivery signing) and twist facts to get what they want (eg, emphasizing the total fee instead of how much it would be split, making people assuming it’s $xxxx per person instead of divided by a ton).

It’d be like someone that worked at McDonalds moved into Wisteria Lane that veto’s 100% of the fees made to fix things or for major quality of life.

This is how Taiwanese would do it.

Everyone saves face and can move on because to do otherwise would cause them to lose face.

What happened in the end? Just curious.

Hired a lawyer that sent in an intimidating letter to step down and call lawyer for questions. Put it in my name so it looked like I was the angry husband with seemingly unlimited money (I don’t, but sure looked like it).

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So, the guy that does not want to be in charge controls payments and the money?

Yes, she’s the “treasurer”. Who is now the mgmt lead, sadly. She was trying to be both the lead AND treasurer (and “audit herself” - so sketchy).

Little did she know that she volunteered for a cursed, unpaid position - only karma awaits her.