Running a Fining Committee Correctly Under Chapters 718, 719 and 720

Jason Hamilton Mikes, JD, MBA
Founder & Managing Shareholder

• Published September 25, 2026
• Reviewed by Jason Hamilton Mikes, JD, MBA, September 26, 2026
• Florida Statutes as of July 1, 2026
• Applies to: Condominiums · HOAs · Cooperatives

A fining committee is not a tribunal and it is not a second board. It exists to give an owner an independent hearing before a fine or suspension the board has already voted to propose takes effect. Chapters 718, 719 and 720 set the composition, the notice period and the vote. They also set traps: a member with the wrong last name, a notice that is 12 days instead of 14, a committee that votes to fine rather than to confirm. Each of those defects is usually fatal to collection.

What the committee is for

The sequence is fixed and the order matters. The board first decides, at a board meeting, that a fine or suspension should be imposed for a specific violation. The association then gives the owner at least 14 days' written notice and an opportunity for a hearing before a committee. The committee then decides whether to let the proposed fine stand.

Chapter 720 puts the point beyond argument: the role of the committee is limited to determining whether to confirm or reject the fine or suspension levied by the board. Chapters 718 and 719 reach the same place from the other direction. If the committee does not approve the proposed fine or suspension by majority vote, the fine or suspension may not be imposed. Either way, the committee has one job and it is a veto, not an initiative.

Boards get this backwards constantly. A manager sends violation letters, the committee meets and votes to fine, and no board vote ever happens. When the association later tries to collect, the owner's counsel asks for the minutes of the board meeting at which the fine was levied, and there is nothing to produce. Fix the order before the first hearing, not after the first challenge.

Composition and the independence requirement

All three chapters use nearly identical language. The committee must consist of at least three members appointed by the board. No member may be an officer, director or employee of the association. No member may be the spouse, parent, child, brother or sister of an officer, director or employee. That list is exhaustive on its face and it is also narrower than most boards assume.

Read carefully, the statute does not disqualify a cousin, an in-law, a business partner, a tenant of a director or the owner who filed the complaint. Those relationships are not on the list. They are still bad appointments, because an owner who loses a hearing before the complaining neighbor's business partner will make that the story, and a court or arbitrator considering whether the hearing was meaningful will hear it. Appoint people with no stake in the dispute and the record takes care of itself.

Two recurring questions. A community association manager employed by a management company is not literally an employee of the association, which is the word the statute uses. Seating that manager on the committee is nonetheless a poor idea, because the manager usually wrote the violation letter. Separately, in a condominium the committee members should be unit owners, since § 718.103(8) describes a committee as board members or unit owners and directors are disqualified from this particular committee by § 718.303(3).

The 14-day notice

Each chapter requires at least 14 days' written notice before a fine or suspension may be imposed. In an HOA the notice goes to the parcel owner, and where applicable to any occupant, licensee or invitee whose conduct is at issue. Chapters 718 and 719 use the same structure for unit owners and their occupants, licensees and invitees.

Content is where notices fail. A notice that says only that the owner is in violation of the rules gives the owner nothing to answer. The notice should identify the specific provision of the declaration, bylaws or rules, describe the conduct and the dates, state the amount of the proposed fine and whether it is being sought per day, give the date, time and place of the hearing, and state that the owner may attend and be heard.

Send it by a method you can prove. Use the address the owner last furnished to the association, and where the statute and your documents permit electronic transmission, use the address the owner designated for that purpose. Keep the certificate of mailing or the delivery confirmation in the file with the notice itself. In a collection action the notice and its proof of delivery are the first two exhibits.

Count the days honestly. Fourteen days means fourteen days before the hearing, not fourteen days from when the letter was drafted. If the board wants the hearing at the next regular meeting and the math does not work, move the hearing. The related suspension and enforcement mechanics are covered in our guide to fines, hearings and suspensions.

The hearing itself

The statutes do not prescribe a format, which leads some associations to run something that looks like a trial and others to run nothing at all. A short, orderly hearing serves the association best.

1. Confirm on the record that at least three eligible committee members are present and name them.
2. Confirm that the notice was sent, when, and to which address, and put a copy in the file.
3. State the rule alleged to have been violated and the conduct alleged, briefly and without argument.
4. Give the owner an opportunity to respond, ask questions and present photographs, correspondence or witnesses.
5. Let the committee ask its own questions. The committee is deciding whether the proposed fine should stand, not whether it likes the owner.
6. Deliberate and vote in the open. A majority of the committee is required to confirm.
7. Record the result in written minutes, including who was present, what was considered and the vote.

The committee is not bound by rules of evidence and should not pretend to be. It is entitled to consider photographs, inspection reports and the manager's log. The owner is entitled to see what the committee is looking at. If the committee needs information nobody brought, continue the hearing rather than guess.

One rule that is easy to forget: in an HOA, if the violation has been cured before the hearing, or cured in the manner specified in the notices, a fine or suspension may not be imposed. A committee that confirms a fine for a fence that came down two weeks ago has confirmed a fine the statute does not permit.

Caps, liens and payment deadlines

The numbers diverge by chapter, and so does the answer to the question boards ask most often, which is whether the fine can be secured.

Three consequences follow. First, in a condominium or cooperative a fine is an unsecured debt. It does not attach to the unit, it does not get paid at closing as an assessment lien would, and it does not move ahead of a mortgage. Collecting it means a claim against the owner personally, which is often not worth the fee. Second, in an HOA the $1,000 threshold is a real line: a fine that stops at $900 can never be secured, while a $1,000 fine can be, if and only if the governing documents authorize a lien for fines. Read the declaration before you assume it does.

Third, the deadlines are not interchangeable. An HOA that demands payment within five days has demanded payment the statute does not allow. A condominium that waits a month to tell the owner the fine was approved has not violated a stated deadline, but it has made its own accounting harder. Write the chapter-specific deadline into the committee's form letter so nobody has to remember it.

Suspensions for nonpayment work differently from fines for violations. Where an owner is more than 90 days delinquent, the use-rights and voting-rights suspensions do not require the 14-day notice and committee hearing at all. That distinction is worth flagging in the charter, because committees are sometimes convened for hearings the statute never required.

Written findings and the record

An HOA must provide the owner written notice of the committee's findings within 7 days after the hearing, and that notice also carries the date payment is due. Chapters 718 and 719 impose no equivalent deadline, which is a reason to adopt one internally rather than a reason to skip the letter.

The letter should state the date of the hearing, who sat, the rule at issue, the committee's decision, the amount confirmed, how the amount was calculated if it accrued per day, and when and where payment is due. Attach nothing argumentative. This letter is read later by a judge or an arbitrator, and its tone is part of the record.

Keep minutes of the hearing as a separate document from the letter. In a condominium those minutes are official records under § 718.111(12)(a)6. In an HOA they fall within the catch-all in § 720.303(4). Either way they will be requested, so write them as though the owner will read them, because the owner will. Our guidance on meeting minutes applies to committee minutes as well.

Boards that run regular hearings should work from a standard packet. The fining committee hearing checklist covers the sequence and the file contents.

The errors that make a fine uncollectible

In roughly the order we see them:

• No board vote. The committee confirmed a fine the board never levied. There is nothing for the committee to confirm.
• An ineligible member. A director's spouse, the treasurer, or a paid employee sat on the committee.
• Fewer than three. Two members held the hearing because the third could not attend.
• Short notice. The letter went out 11 days before the hearing, or went to an address the owner had replaced.
• Vague notice. The notice never identified the rule or the conduct, so the owner could not prepare.
• Enforcing a rule that was not in effect. The rule was adopted after the conduct, or was never properly adopted at all.
• Per-day accrual without the single notice. The association fined daily without the notice and hearing opportunity that permits it.
• Selective enforcement. Three other owners have the same violation and received nothing.
• Exceeding the cap. An aggregate above $1,000 without any support in the governing documents.
• Trying to lien a condominium fine. Recording a claim of lien for a fine the statute says may never become one.
• No minutes. The hearing happened and nothing records that it did.

Most of these are cured by process rather than by judgment. Adopt a form notice, a form findings letter and a standing list of eligible committee members, and review all three with counsel once. Our broader treatment of covenant enforcement sets the fining process alongside the other remedies, including injunctive relief, which is often the better tool when the goal is to stop conduct rather than to collect money.

For community association managers: see An owner is violating the rules: how does a manager get from complaint to a lawful fine? in the Manager Resource Center.

Contact Hamilton Mikes

Hamilton Mikes drafts fining procedures, notice and findings forms, and trains committees for condominium, cooperative and homeowners associations across Southwest Florida, and advises boards on when fining is the wrong remedy. Call 239-594-7227 or visit our Covenant Enforcement page.