HOAleader.com - Tip of the Week - April 15, 2022
Published: Fri, 04/15/22
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HOAleader.com - Tip of the Week - April 15, 2022
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In this week's tip, we help you begin archiving your association-related text chains.
Everybody's texting, and it's not just for the innocuous "hey, I'm going to be late" heads up. Condo and HOA board members across the nation are doing association business by text.
Here's the thing: You may be doing it with the knowledge that life will become very stressful and complicated if you ever have to find, recover, and share those texts with a third party because of, say, a lawsuit. But for now, it's easier to text and not worry about that possible situation.
In this week's tip, we explain why our experts would really like you to think about that today, not when that crisis emerges. The good news is that there's technology that allows you to save texts with relative ease. You just have to start using one.
"Apps that turn texts into a PDF or some other format that you can save where you commonly save documents and emails is clearly the way to go," notes Daniel J. Miske, CCAL, an equity partner at Husch Blackwell in Milwaukee who represents 800 associations throughout Wisconsin at any given time. "But I'm not aware of any of my associations that actually use those. Saying board members should do it and having them actually do it are such distinct things."
Our experts are eternal optimists. Before they offer advice on saving your texts, they'd really like to take one more shot at convincing you to stop texting about association business altogether.
"I don't advise it," says Julie McGhee Howard, co-founder and managing partner of NowackHoward LLC in Atlanta, who at any given time represents hundreds of condos and HOAs throughout Georgia. "If that's how you're communicating for association business, it's certainly discoverable if there's ever litigation related to those texts. Using texts isn't practical in terms of recordkeeping, in my opinion."
If you're not familiar with the term, "discoverable" means that if you end up in litigation, your opponent will have every right to see these texts, and you'll need to share them one way or another.
Ditto for Alessandra Stivelman, who is board-certified in condo and planned development law and a partner at Eisinger Law in Hollywood, Fla. "My first comment is don't do it," she says. "It opens up a whole can of worms. I know there are apps and software to help you save texts, but board members aren't going to volunteer to have all their texts saved."
Even though our experts would prefer that you not text for business, we did some digging on tech that can help you archive texting rather than stop texting altogether. Find out the apps people recommend and why screen grabs probably won't cut it in our new article: https://www.hoaleader.com/members/4502.cfm
Best regards,
Matt Humphrey
President
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