Legal Underpinning of Our Association

Our condominium instruments (Declaration, Bylaws, and plats and plans) are subordinate to the legal requirements of the governments of the U. S., Virginia, and Fairfax County. In other words, if there is a conflict between government legal requirements and our condominium instruments, the government legal requirements take precedence over--trump--our condominium instruments.

Of all those government legal requirements, it is the Condominium Act—Chapter 4.2 of Title 55 of the Code of Virginia—that has the most relevance for us as a condominium unit owners association (UOA). The following link displays the table of contents of the Condominium Act, and you can view particular sections of the Condominium Act by clicking on the number of the section that interests you.  (You might find the .75 and .75:1 provisions interesting.)

http://law.lis.virginia.gov/vacode/title55/chapter4.2/

You can see an example of our Bylaws being in conflict with the Condominium Act by clicking on this link:  http://mstc-uoa.blogspot.com/2007/12/filling-director-vacancy.html

Our Declaration and Bylaws sometimes refer us to the Condominium Act for further information. For example, our Bylaws don’t describe the procedure to amend our Bylaws, as is being considered with regard to the leasing Bylaw. Instead, Section 1 of Article XIV of our Bylaws states that our "Bylaws may be modified or amended as provided in Section 55-79.71 of the Condominium Act.”  Also, the last sentence of Section 8 of Article III of our Bylaws states that “All meetings of the Board of Directors shall be held in accordance with Section 55-79.75 of the Virginia Condominium Act.”

If you want to see in context the actual Bylaw sections I cited in the above paragraph, you can do so by clicking on the below link to our Bylaws.  Then go to page 60 of 64, and page 20 of 64, respectively, to see the words I quoted above.
http://www.marketstreetattowncenter.com/docs/BylawsV4.PDF