Restating governing documents
When your declaration has too many amendments to read as one document, restating it starts over with a single clean version.
A restatement replaces an entire declaration, bylaws, or articles with one new consolidated document that folds in every amendment adopted since the original was recorded. An amendment, by contrast, changes only one provision, or a few, in the document currently in force. Boards consider restating when accumulated amendments have made the documents hard to read or administer as a set, not on any fixed schedule.
What a restatement actually changes
Every time your association amends its declaration, that amendment gets recorded as its own separate document. Read five, ten, or fifteen years' worth of those together with the original declaration, and you get a patchwork: the current rule on any topic might be sentence one of the original plus a correction from 2014 plus a further tweak from 2021.
A restatement collapses all of that into a single new document. It does not usually create new substantive rules on its own. It takes what the original document plus every amendment already say, combines them into one readable text, and that consolidated document is then recorded to replace the patchwork of original text plus amendments.
When boards consider it, and why there is no fixed trigger
There is no standard number of amendments or number of years that makes restating the right move. What practitioners point to instead is whether the documents have become hard to read or administer as a set, whether the original text and later amendments actually conflict with each other, or whether provisions no longer match current state statute. Whether your association needs a restatement, and what vote it takes to approve one, depends on your own governing documents and your state's statute. Ask your manager or attorney to review your specific set.
If only one provision needs to change, an amendment is the more direct tool. Restating is a bigger undertaking, usually involving legal review of the entire document, not just the section that bothers the board this year.
Recording makes it official
A restatement is not complete just because the board and members voted for it. Like an amendment, it has to be recorded with the local land records office before it binds future owners. Nevada's statute illustrates how this works for amendments generally:
"The persons executing the amendment shall provide a copy thereof to the association, which shall record it. The amendment must be recorded in the names of the parties and the common-interest community."
Source: Nevada Revised Statutes Chapter 116, State of Nevada Legislature
A restated declaration works the same way: until it is recorded, the version that governs a property is whatever the recorder's office shows, original document plus all recorded amendments read together. The exact recording procedure and required contents for a restatement vary by state. Confirm the process with your county recorder or your association's attorney before relying on this page.
Check yourself
Answer before you read the explanation, recalling it is what makes it stick.
Your declaration has been amended fourteen times over twenty years and board members disagree on what the current rule actually says. What should the board consider?
The board wants to change only the pet weight limit in the declaration. What is the more direct tool?
After a restatement is properly recorded, what happens to the original declaration and its amendments?
Sources
- A Step-by-Step Approach to Amending and Restating Governing Documents, CAI California Legislative Action Committee
- Nevada Revised Statutes Chapter 116, Common Interest Ownership, State of Nevada Legislature
Governing Documents
Next, see how a single-provision change works in Amendment procedures, or check what recording actually requires in Recording amendments.
Whether restating requires the same vote threshold as an ordinary amendment, and what your state's recording statute requires a restatement to include, vary by state and by your own declaration and bylaws.