HOA shredded our Money Order. Is Money Order an Official Record? Are there other Records we can request? Per our state's rule on HOAs: (4) OFFICIAL RECORDS.—The association shall maintain each of the following items, when applicable, which constitute the official records of the association: [...] (j) The financial and accounting records of the association, kept according to good accounting practices. All financial and accounting records must be maintained for a period of at least 7 years. The financial and accounting records must include: [...] 4. Any other records that identify, measure, record, or communicate financial information. This makes a money order (MO) an official record. We recently had a situation where we used an older money order (1+ year) to take care of a bill paid on time to our association. This was done a few months ago. Recently we found out that they couldn't cash the money order and the balance was not settled. We still owe money for that month and they recorded a NSF (Insufficient Funds) Fee for that MO. An MO is a guaranteed form of money and can be used like cash but I suppose if there is an issue with the age of the MO, that could have caused an issue even though the issuer told us that they don't expire. We asked for the MO to be returned to us so we can resolve the issue with the issuer but the HOA later told us that they shredded the MO and they no longer have it in their possession. We are beyond fuming at their lack of communication, nature of aggressive language regarding to recover association fees, their NSF fee and also the destruction of our MO. We need proof of what was wrong with the MO (it's a guaranteed form of payment) and we have no evidence of why they claim NSF fee on us. Can we request the MO back as an official record per 4.j.4 as we have no way of knowing what happened once we handed the MO over to them? Can we request receipts? How do we know what they did?
Check rules apply here, including Check21 This is a bit complicated because of &quot;old school&quot; check rules and the Check21 changes. First, a money order is basically a &quot;bearer document&quot; much like cash. After all, but for your copies, you would have had no data from which to establish its existence. In fact, that's why WU has their $1.50 holding fees. It allows them to seize and extinguish small-value money orders, so they don't have to keep records of them for 50 years. A $50 money order 3 years old is entirely forfeit. Note that the Post Office does not do that. The fraud here works like this: A) you pay the payee by a money order. B) a blackguard employee takes the money order but claims to have lost it (bonus points, some sniveling excuse to let them blame-shift this onto you, like &quot;it bounced&quot;). D) you reissue payment to the payee. E) the payee will cash and credit the second payment. F) the blackguard cashes the first money order, stealing that value from you. In the checking system, the defense against that fraud is that the pwhen your check or money order bounces, the bank will return to the payee that check or money order with a bunch of codes and markings which document the steps the check passed through the clearinghouse system. Then, the payee returns that check/MO back to you, with the markings proving that it bounced. So they must return the instrument to you. That is the payee's proof to you that the fraud did not and will not happen. It's not optional unless they trick you. Check21 changes the process, but only somewhat. At any step in the process, the bank may take a high resolution digital scan of the check/MO. For instance, if you deposit into an ATM machine, all those whirrs and clicks might be the ATM machine scanning and uploading the check image to the server, at which point the server authenticates the image as &quot;looking like a cheque&quot; and tells the ATM to route the cheque into the &quot;shred&quot; bin. (Or shreds it on the spot). In fact you are doing that very process when you deposit checks with your phone camera. How are returned checks handled? Check21 provides for a mechanism for a bank to turn the digitized check back into paper, by issuing a certified copy of the check. This will include both sides and all relevant notations from its journey through the clearinghouse system. This is the certified copy that MUST be returned to you if the HOA intends to claim your check bounced. And yes, this costs money, but that is what bounced-check fees are for. They are paying for things like that certified copy. So there isn't a second fee to get that certified copy; that's included in the fee they are trying to charge you, and the fee the bank is supposedly charging them. Produce that certified copy! So if your HOA is dealing honestly, the &quot;shredding&quot; they spoke of may have been done by the bank, as part of the Check21 process. And that's fine; if they are not lying they can produce a certified copy in lieu of the original. If THEY DO produce that certified copy, then you need to make good on it plus their bounced payment fee. You take the certified copy back to the issuer and say &quot;WTH&quot; and work it out with them. If THEY DON'T produce that copy, then they blew it. You get to teach them an expensive lesson, e.g. by claiming that one of their staffers probably stole it. They must credit the payment to your account. They can threaten to lien your house, but tell them they can't make it stick. In court, the judge will say &quot;produce the bounced check&quot;. If they try to say they shredded it, it will sound like &quot;the dog ate it&quot;. That will put them on their back foot, and make their lawyer nervous and tell them to work with you. It won't actually work. Since you do have enough data to recover your money from WU, you must do so, because of the duty to mitigate damages. You also have the duty to turn over all data, so they'll know it. But it's a fun intimidation position. So really, you have access to a spectrum of returning their jerkishness: force them to credit your account with the schadenfreude of knowing they probably didn't get paid, at very small risk of losing in court. go to WU and retrieve most of your funds, point out how they mishandled it, and meet them at some halfway point (e.g. waive the penalty fee if you make good the amount) retrieve funds from WU, suck up and pay them everything they ask for. ...although I must say, I don't quite understand the value of cheating an HOA. The HOA is you. They pay you back in the value they bring to your development, of which you are an equal beneficiary. Those commons-area roads and lawns don't pave and mow themselves.
Bill and Jane are free to enter into a contract where, among other things, each provides valuable consideration; in this case Bill provides valuable lawn mowing services and Jane provides valuable money. In week No 1 they have negotiated the terms and the contract is complete when Bill mows the lawn and Jane pays the money. If Bill turns up next week without Jane's instruction then there is no contract and Jane does not have to pay anything; I don't think this is what you are asking but I include it for completeness. If it is understood that this arrangement continue week after week then either there is an ongoing contract or, more likely, a series of independent contracts. If there is an ongoing contract, then it can be renegotiated but it cannot be changed unilaterally by Bill. That is, he cannot unilaterally increase the price to $2. If there is a series of contracts then the terms of each of those contracts will be the same based on the course of dealing. Basically, the parties have accepted over a long period of time that the rate for a mow is $1 and Bill would have to get Jane to accept the revised rate before he mows the lawn. For your example, Jane owes Bill $1 but if she wants him back next week she will have to agree to Bill's rate.
We don't want this issue to adversely affect our credit and got legal consulting which suggested we should pay the debt collector to protect our credit score, and then sue the landlord for the money back in small claims court. I'm a little worried about this strategy since it requires to hand away the money first, and am trying to get second opinions. The debt collector is probably either the owner of the claim against you, if it is an assignee of the claim, or an agent of the landlord for purposes of collection. Thus, payment to the debt collector is equivalent to payment of the landlord. The law varies from jurisdiction to jurisdiction regarding whether payment constitutes of waiver of a right to sue over the debt. Sometimes it is necessary to designate the payment "under protests" or "reserving all rights", but that is not a uniform rule of law that applies in all jurisdictions, and I do not have the time and familiarity with that state's law to research Massachusetts case law on that point accurately.
A Last Will and Testament can be very complex. The longest and most complex one that I have drafted runs to about eighty pages. I've seen some in probate proceedings that run to about 120 pages, with additional exhibits of numerous pages containing legal descriptions for real property and serial numbers and account numbers for other assests. How many resources will be expended to execute it? Is this process self-funding? The fiduciaries appointed to carry out with implementing a Last Will and Testament in a probate proceeding spend whatever they need to spend to carry it out, to the extent that funds are available in the estate. The assets of the estate pay for these costs of estate administration. Say, if it prescribes that assets should be disseminated only upon a condition, possibly many years in the future, can I be sure it will happen exactly as described? You can't. You're dead. You nominate fiduciaries such as executives, personal representatives, administrators, guardians, conservators, trustees, custodians, and trust protectors to carry it out. They have fiduciary duties to faithfully carry out your instructions which interested persons, such as creditors and beneficiaries of the estate and trust protectors, can sue to enforce. In the case of charitable trusts, there is also a government official (in the United States, usually the state attorney general of the state in which the estate is administered) that has standing to enforce will and trust provisions for the benefit of a charity. There are certain legal doctrines that exist to discourage you from exercising &quot;dead hand&quot; control for too long. One of this is a very complicated rule known as the &quot;Rule Against Perpetuities&quot; which differs from jurisdiction to jurisdiction. Another (in the U.S.) is a tax known as the Generation Skipping Transfer Tax. There are also legal doctrines that allow interested persons to apply to a court to modify or reform the terms of a probated will or trust, doctrines such as the cy pres doctrine to deal with cases where transfers to entities or persons that no longer exist are present, doctrines that invalidate certain dead hand directions (e.g. related to race or to marriage) as a matter of public policy, statutes that invalidate certain kinds of real estate ownership with remote possibilities of reversion to a remote relative (e.g. fee tail), and doctrines that allow will and trust provisions to be reformed because it is impracticable to carry the out the terms even if it isn't strictly speaking impossible to do so. For example, can I award my legacy to someone who solves a certain equation (where the verification of this might be complex, and costly in time and money)? Subject to the doctrines set forth above, yes, this is possible. The typical way to do this would be to establish a foundation to oversee this part of the legacy and to name someone such as the current holder of an endowed professorship, or the chair of a university department or scientific institute, as an arbitrator of the question of whether the condition was met (typically with instructions to pay for that service as an administrative cost or instructions that it be self-funded by the recipient of an endowment gift to an institution as a condition of receiving an endowment gift). If an arbitrator was not appointed, a court would typically appoint an expert known as a &quot;special master&quot; to investigate the question (as the expense of the parties seeking to be paid and the estate) to determine if the condition was met in the event that this was disputed, or to ratify that the condition was met, in the event that this was not disputed. The &quot;special master&quot; would then investigate the matter and issue a report after receiving input from all parties and any independent investigation that was authorized by the order appointing the special master, and the report to the court would recommend a resolution. The parties could tell the court whether they disputed the special master's finding, and if so why, and the court would almost always adopt the special master's recommendation on the basis of that report. I have seen this process used in cases involving complex tax questions in probate court. Another common way to do this would be to establish a donor advised fund in a &quot;community foundation&quot; which is a foundation shared by many donors with a common administrative staff and investment pool that administers foundation-like funds from particular donors according to the substantive terms of the fund. There are examples of things similar to this (such as the Nobel Prize) being done. When I was in law school, there was a popular urban legend, I don't know if it was true or not, but it could have been true, that the dining hall in the law school (at the University of Michigan where I took my meals for my first year in law school) was endowed on the condition that steak be served every Friday. True or not, the steak was always there on Fridays.
It would be up to your HOA agreement. If you signed a contract agreeing to pay for services then yes. If not then no. An HOA agreement is just a contract like any other and you would have to abide by what you agreed to. Also, they may not have an actual contract for you to sign, but by moving to the community you would be agreeing to follow the by laws of the HOA. If you have a disagreement with them that can not be resolved, you can let a judge decide in court, but that could cost more than just getting the service. https://www.wishtv.com/news/local-news/indianapolis-man-battles-homeowners-association-over-solar-panels/ So to sum it up, you can refuse but they have the right to take you to court if they choose. I would assume a judge would rule in your favor since it's an issue of what goes on in your own home, but there is really no way for anyone to say what someone else will do.
If you had an agreement that amounts to a contract, it is binding even if it was informal. However, if your agreement was not in writing, it might be hard to prove. You can easily prove that you transferred money to the other party. But can you prove that it was a loan an not a gift? And even if it is agreed to be a loan, if no repayment time was specified, what says that the debt is due now? Was the agreement really for a loan repayable on demand? The court would have to determine what your real contract was, or what contract can be implied from the actions of the parties. Also, if you are in a common-law jurisdiction, there could be a question of what consideration there was for the loan. Without consideration, there is no valid contract in such a jurisdiction. Perhaps a promise to repay could be treated as sufficient consideration. Small-claims courts do deal with unclear verbal contracts on a regular basis, but the outcome will depend on the facts of the case, and on the details of local law. It might be wise to consult a local lawyer with small-claims experience. A single consultation should not be too expensive. In response to comment If the &quot;written binding agreements&quot; include a statement from the other person that this is a loan, and a promise to repay it, you are in a stronger position than I had thought from the original question. The question for the court would be, since there was no due date agreed, what is a reasonable date to impose. The court might treat it as a loan repayable on demand, or specify some particular date for repayment.
In principle, the data subject's right to access involves a copy of all personal data the controller holds on them. There are no time limits by default. Of course, the controller can ask a data subject to clarify their request, e.g. to focus on a particular time frame. There is an implied time limit though: personal data may only be processed/stored for as long as the data is necessary to achieve the purposes for which it was collected. Afterwards, it must be deleted. A controller with good data management will be able to limit their effort by having as short retention periods as possible for their different records. Furthermore, a lot of data is not personal data, or falls out of scope of the GDPR because it is not processed with automated means or forms part of a filing system. For example, if thousands of old invoices were archived in paper form in boxes that are only sorted by year, there might be an argument that this isn't a filing system in the sense of the GDPR and that a DSAR would not have to involve looking through all the archived invoices (compare also Art 11). In your scenario, there is a clear retention period of six years. You are asking for records about how that data might have been used further in the past. To the degree that such data is actually available, that could reasonably be personal data and should be included in a response to a DSAR. E.g. they might have information like this: “File #1234 was included in a data set that was sold to EvilCorp in 2007. The entries in File #1234 that are older than 2014 have been purged, so we do not know which entries were included in the data set. The current name on File #1234 is Dave.” This information about the sale would be personal data because it relates to you, and you are identifiable. Of course, the controller might not be set up to perform this search unless specifically asked. However, more unspecific information might not be personal data. For example: “About 70% of our files were included in a data set that was sold to EvilCorp in 2007. We no longer have records indicating whether your file was included.” Since there is no link between the sale and your personal data, I don't think it would have to be included in a DSAR response. The primary reason why you should be told about sales of personal data is that per Art 15(1)(c), you should be informed about “the recipients or categories of recipient to whom the personal data have been or will be disclosed” in a DSAR response. So when making a data subject access request, it could make sense to explicitly referencing this paragraph. So you would be interested in receiving a copy of your personal data as per Art 15 GDPR, and in particular any available information per Art 15(1)(c) GDPR about the recipients or categories of recipients to whom your personal data has been or may have been disclosed in the past. Quite likely the response will be underwhelming, e.g. by just giving a broad category such as “potential creditors who are contractually obligated to use the data only in accordance with our policies”. Whether such responses are compliant (I don't necessarily think so) will not be clear until there's a good precedent, and that would require that someone sorts this out in court.
Colorado HOAs are required to make many kinds of documents available to HOA members. The Colorado Common Interest Ownership Act (CCIOA) includes the following language in section 38-33.3-209.4. Public disclosures required It is the intent of this section to allow the association the widest possible latitude in methods and means of disclosure, while requiring that the information be readily available at no cost to unit owners at their convenience. Disclosure shall be accomplished by one of the following means: posting on an internet web page with accompanying notice of the web address via first-class mail or e-mail; the maintenance of a literature table or binder at the association’s principal place of business; or mail or personal delivery. The cost of such distribution shall be accounted for as a common expense liability. If the distribution includes information the HOA is bound to share to you, and this service is at no cost to you, it would appear on the surface of this law that the HOA is afforded the &quot;widest possible latitude in methods and means&quot; of disclosure, and that they have exactly performed &quot;posting on an internet web page with accompanying notice of the web address via ... e-mail&quot;