Legal Question in Real Estate Law in Florida

I moved from Florida to Arizona, when I left my home in Florida we did not have a management company, we handled our HOA ourselves in the neighborhood. I filed my change of address with the U.S Post Office and it was reflected in my property record. However, in the time I was gone, the neighborhood hired a management company who neglected to check the property record and simply mailed my notice of dues to the home. This caused a delay and they hired an attorney to look in the property record and mail my notice to me at my listed address in Arizona. Now I am being billed $250 for an attorney to do this! My question is this, I did not hire this attorney nor did I do anything to cause this attorney to be hired. They hired him to look up an address and are billing me for it. I didnt do anything wrong, I paid my dues within 1 hour of recieving my first notice? Why would they not send the notice to the owner address on the property record and how does this make me responsible for the attorney? I have paid my dues but have not yet paid the attorney, who I agree deserves to be paid his fee for services rendered but should be paid by the management company for hiring him needlessly to do a simple address check. What can I do?


Asked on 1/11/11, 3:27 am

1 Answer from Attorneys
Shelly Schellenberg MI & FL private practice

If you filed an address change with the US post office, the billing should not have taken more than 2 weeks to reach you at your new location. If your HOA hired an attorney, when your dues were less than 30 days late, without attempting to determine whether or not you even received the notice, it seems that they were a little hasty. Tell the HOA that you will take them to small claims court for the attorney fee that they are attempting to charge you. Take all of your documents (hopefully you saved the envelope the notice came in) including a copy of the address change form that the post office sent to you, proving that you changed your address, and a copy of the property records. Show everything to the court. The judge will decide whose story makes the most sense. BTW, address changes only forward mail for 1 year.

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Answered on 1/16/11, 6:46 am


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