What a Florida condo director owes is now written in a chapter about nonprofits

Until the first of July, the Florida nonprofit corporation act closed its standards for directors with a sentence that did one job. Subsection (4) of section 617.0830 said a director is not liable for any action taken as a director, or any failure to take any action, if he or she performed the duties of the office in compliance with that section. Meet the standard, and the standard answered for you.

That sentence is no longer in the statute book.

Nothing in chapter 718 changed to remove it. Nothing in chapter 720 changed either. The condominium law and the homeowners' association law both reach the standard of care by pointing at the nonprofit corporation act, and in June the Legislature rewrote the part they point at.

What changed for Florida condo and HOA boards on 1 July 2026?

Chapter 2026-168, an act about nonprofit corporations, substantially reworded section 617.0830 and reordered and amended section 617.0834. The first is the standard association directors are held to. The second is the section that says when a director pays money personally. Both took effect 1 July 2026. Neither chapter 718 nor chapter 720 was amended to say so.

The act ran to 190 sections and was approved by the Governor and filed with the Secretary of State on 25 June 2026. Its section 50 replaced 617.0830 entire, under a note reading substantial rewording of section. Its section 52 reordered and amended 617.0834. Its section 54 created a section that had no predecessor, 617.0844. And its sections 187 and 189 reenacted paragraphs of the homeowners' association and condominium chapters, expressly for the purpose of incorporating the amendments in references to them, which is the legislative way of saying that those chapters keep their existing words while the words they cite change underneath.

Until this month none of that could be checked against a codified text. On 6 August, when this desk last read it, the Legislature's own site served the 2025 compilation and its year selector offered nothing later, so every citation on this beat carried that vintage and the 2026 acts had to be read as enrolled bills. The site now serves the 2026 compilation. That is what makes the paragraphs below a reading of the statute rather than a reading of a bill.

The defence that came out

The old section had four subsections. Three of them set the standard of care and the terms on which a director could rely on somebody else's work, and the fourth closed the loop: a director who performed the duties of the office in compliance with the section was not liable for what he or she did or did not do.

The new section has six. It splits the duty in two, requiring a director to act in good faith and in a manner the director reasonably believes is in the best interests of the corporation, and separately to discharge duties, when becoming informed in connection with a decisionmaking function or devoting attention to an oversight function, with the care that an ordinary prudent person in a like position would reasonably believe appropriate under similar circumstances. It extends the reliance provisions to functions the board has delegated formally or informally by course of conduct. It adds that a director is not a trustee. It does not contain the compliance sentence.

The care standard itself moved as well, from the care an ordinarily prudent person would exercise to the care such a person would reasonably believe appropriate. Whether that is a different test or the same test said differently is a question for a court and not for this page.

Who section 617.0834 now covers

The immunity section moved further, and the most consequential thing about it is a deletion that requires no interpretation at all.

Through 30 June 2026 the section was titled officers and directors of certain corporations and associations not for profit, and it opened by naming them: an officer or director of a nonprofit organization recognized under section 501(c)(3), 501(c)(4) or 501(c)(6) of the Internal Revenue Code, or of an agricultural or horticultural organization recognized under 501(c)(5). A Florida community association is a not for profit corporation. It is very rarely an organization recognized under any of those paragraphs.

The section as it now reads is titled liability of directors and officers, and it opens: a director or an officer is not personally liable for monetary damages to the corporation or any person. The tax recognition clause is struck. So is the limit that had confined the immunity to statements, votes and decisions regarding organizational management or policy.

One definition survives and still does work. For the purposes of that section, an officer means a person who serves as an officer without compensation except reimbursement for actual expenses. A paid officer is outside the definition. A director is not defined by compensation at all.

Two different tests in the same chain of citations

The immunity falls away on a list, and the list is where the condominium problem sits.

Before July there was one final trigger: recklessness, or an act or omission committed in bad faith or with malicious purpose or in a manner exhibiting wanton and willful disregard of human rights, safety or property. The rewritten section splits it. In a proceeding by or in the right of the corporation, or by or in the right of a member, the trigger is now conscious disregard for the best interest of the corporation, or willful or intentional misconduct. The recklessness and bad faith formula is confined to a proceeding brought by someone who is neither the corporation nor a member. The two other triggers, a violation of the criminal law and a transaction from which the director or officer derived an improper personal benefit, are unchanged.

Now read section 718.111(1)(d), which is the whole of what the condominium act says on the subject. An officer, director or agent shall be liable for monetary damages as provided in section 617.0834 if the breach constitutes a violation of criminal law as provided in section 617.0834, or a transaction from which an improper personal benefit was derived, or recklessness or an act or omission that was in bad faith, with malicious purpose, or in a manner exhibiting wanton and willful disregard of human rights, safety or property.

That paragraph was reenacted on 25 June, word for word, by section 189 of the same act that split the trigger. It recites the recklessness formula. Section 617.0834 now applies that formula only where the plaintiff is neither the association nor a member of it. And under section 718.111(1)(a), the owners of units are shareholders or members of the association, which puts a unit owner suing a director squarely inside the other test.

No decision construing either amended section was found. The acts do not resolve it, and this page does not pretend to.

A new section that no association chapter points at

Section 54 of the act created section 617.0844, standards of conduct for officers. It gives officers of a not for profit corporation their own good faith and best interests duty, their own care standard, and their own reliance provisions, in language that tracks the rewritten director section.

Chapter 718 does not cite it. Neither does chapter 719, the cooperative act, nor chapter 720. A search of all three chapters as compiled returns the number 617.0844 zero times in each. What the condominium act says instead, in that same paragraph 718.111(1)(d), is that as required by section 617.0830 an officer, director or agent shall discharge his or her duties in good faith and with the care an ordinarily prudent person would exercise. Section 617.0830 is now titled general standards for directors, and its first subsection begins: each member of the board of directors.

Where else the rewritten standard reaches

Three association emergency powers provisions, one in each chapter, are drafted to operate consistent with section 617.0830: section 718.1265 for condominiums, section 719.128 for cooperatives, and section 720.316 for homeowners' associations. Those are the powers a board uses after a hurricane to enter units, contract for repairs, borrow money and levy what the damage costs. The standard they run through is the one that was rewritten in June, in the middle of the season they were written for.

The homeowners' association side carries one reference the condominium side does not. Under section 720.3033(2), an officer, director or manager who knowingly solicits or accepts a kickback commits a third degree felony, must be removed from office immediately, and is subject to monetary damages under section 617.0834. That paragraph was reenacted by section 187 of the act, on the same terms and for the same stated reason as the condominium one.

The commentary that followed the act went next door. Bryony Swift, writing on Becker's Florida Condo and HOA Law Blog on 27 July, took up the same act's rewrite of section 617.0832, the conflict of interest section, which is the third of the three the act reworded and the one chapter 720 points at for interested transactions. This desk read that rewrite in its coverage of the 2026 homeowners' association changes on 11 August.

What an owner can actually check

None of this is visible in a governing document. A declaration recorded in 1998 recites the law as it stood in 1998, and the bylaws will not mention a section of the nonprofit corporation act at all. The text that decides the question sits three chapters away from the one with condominium in the title, and the only reliable version of it is the compilation the Legislature publishes.

Two things are worth reading rather than being told about. The first is section 718.111(1), which is short, and which is the entire statement of what a condominium officer or director owes. The second is section 617.0834, which is shorter still, and which now says something different from what most of the pages written about it before July say.

Frequently asked questions

Are Florida condo board members personally liable for their decisions? Section 718.111(1)(d) provides that an officer, director or agent shall be liable for monetary damages as provided in section 617.0834 where a breach of duty constitutes a violation of criminal law, a transaction producing an improper personal benefit, or recklessness or an act or omission in bad faith, with malicious purpose or in wanton and willful disregard of human rights, safety or property. Section 617.0834 sets out when the immunity it grants falls away, and since 1 July 2026 that answer depends on who brought the proceeding.

Does section 617.0834 apply to a condominium or homeowners' association? Through 30 June 2026 the section named the organizations it covered by their Internal Revenue Code recognition, and a community association is rarely one of them. Chapter 2026-168 struck those words. The section as compiled in the 2026 Florida Statutes reads on a director or an officer, with no tax status condition.

What happened to the rule that a director who complied with the statute was not liable? It was subsection (4) of section 617.0830 and it is not in the substantially reworded section that replaced it on 1 July 2026. The new section states duties, care and reliance, and stops there.

Did the condominium statute change in 2026? Section 718.111 carries two 2026 entries in its amendment history: section 42 of chapter 2026-14, the reviser's bill, which corrected an internal cross reference, and section 189 of chapter 2026-168, which reenacted paragraph (1)(d) without altering its words. Section 718.112 carries section 43 of chapter 2026-14. Section 553.899, the milestone inspection statute, carries no 2026 entry at all.

Where is the current text? The Legislature publishes it at leg.state.fl.us, which now serves the 2026 compilation. Chapter 2026-168 itself is at laws.flrules.org, and its section 190 sets the effective date at 1 July 2026.