Wilton Civic Alliance

My Home Maintenance Corporation Won't Accept My Assessments

Our Home Maintenance Corporation has refused to accept my assessments for the last 5 years.

How can this be?

Over 5 years ago we sent our assessment with a letter asking for financial accountability.

The check in the letter was never cashed.

When the next assessment bill arrived it showed we had not paid the last assessment -- even though we hand carried the letter and check to the Post Office where the association's P.O. Box is located.

Since it was our word against the associations' word that we even mailed the check & letter, we decided to send all future assessment payments by Certified, Return Reciept so we would have proof of mailing.

Thus far, we have mailed 11 envelopes containing our assessments with letters to the P.O. Box.  The Postmaster confirmed to us that they have a record of every reminder that they have placed in our community-paid-for post office box.  Know that 33 reminders have been ignored.

Only one person is authorized to access the community post office box.

This one person continues to send us assessment bills and has even added late charges.

This person won't answer her door, this person won't speak if you approach them to find out why they are creating this debt for us. 

While this person deliberately created this debt for us by not collecting our mail from the community post office box -- they continued to retrieve non-certified mail from the same box.

This person has placed 3 liens on our property.  This person went to the Recorder of Deeds Office with a sob story -- the Recorder of Deeds Office didn't question or investigate the details, instead, they took the $213 + $213 + $213 = $639.  So, this person took $639 of the community's money to punish us for her not collecting our assessments.

All the while, we have been having conversations with other officers telling them what the president was doing to us.  They said they would either think about it or they would have a talk with the president.

And, we have spent the last 3 years telling our story to every elected official we could think of in the State of Delaware.  We've been to the Govenor's office, the Secretary of State, past county executive Chris Coons, the present county executive, the county attorney, land use, county council president's office, our councilman, our state representative, our state senator and the recorder of deeds.

So it appears that it is acceptable for your Home Maintenance Corporation President and Board to abuse the power of their office to harrass homeowners.

This could happen to you one day, then, what would you do?

We need to prevent this bad behavior in our Home Maintenance Corporations.  Remember, it was the Delaware State Legislature that initiated thise corporations to keep the county from managing all of the developments.  They made the law, washed their hands, and walked away leaving the homeowner to go through the legal expense of regaining the enjoyment of their property.

If you are not seeing the books of your corporation, there is a good chance the recordrdkeeping of your Home Mainenance Corporation may be questionable.