Owners served our HOA board with a recall petition. What do we have to do, and by when?

By OurHOA · General information · Revised November 3, 2026

What an HOA board must do after owners serve a recall petition: Florida's 5-business-day certify-or-arbitrate rule, Texas and Colorado vote steps, and sample minutes.

Part of the HOA board handbook: running the board.

The short answer

A recall petition is not a complaint the board gets to answer when it has time. It starts a statutory clock, and in Florida missing that clock decides the recall for you. The board's job is narrow: record when the petition arrived, check it against the statute and the bylaws, hold the meeting or vote the law requires, and document every decision. Whether the board agrees with the recall is irrelevant to that job. The mechanics differ sharply by state. Florida lets owners recall directors with signed written agreements, no meeting needed, and gives the board 5 full business days to certify the recall or go to court or state arbitration. Texas and Colorado run removals through a members' meeting, so the petition usually works as a demand for a special meeting. Your declaration, articles and bylaws add their own rules on top. This guide is general education, not legal advice, and a recall is one of the few times a small board should call its association attorney the same day.

The first day: log it and start the clock

Write down the date, the time, who received the petition and how it came: certified mail, a process server, a hand delivery to a director, an email. In Florida the method matters, because section 720.303(10)(b)1. says written recall agreements or ballots must be served on the association by certified mail or by personal service under chapter 48 and the civil procedure rules. Keep the envelope, the green card or the server's paperwork. Scan the whole stack before anyone writes on it, and store the original with the association's records. Then send the full board and the attorney a short email: what arrived, when, and the deadline you count to. Count business days conservatively, skip weekends and legal holidays, and do not assume the day of receipt counts. Directors named in the petition stay on the board until a recall takes effect. They should still keep their hands off the signature count. In Texas that is the law for the vote itself: section 209.00594(a) of the Property Code bars the person who is the subject of an association vote, and relatives within the third degree, from tabulating or seeing the ballots.

Florida: certify or file within 5 full business days

Under section 720.303(10), owners can recall any director, with or without cause, by a majority of the total voting interests. That means a majority of every vote in the association, not a majority of the owners who bothered to sign. The documents cannot raise that threshold. Recall at a members' meeting is only available when the declaration, articles or bylaws provide for it, and a notice for that meeting may not go out by electronic transmission. For a written recall, the board must notice and hold a board meeting within 5 full business days after receipt. Posted notice for a board meeting is 48 hours under section 720.303(2)(c), or 7 days by mail if your community does not post. At that meeting the board either certifies the recall, which takes effect immediately, or votes not to certify. If it refuses, it has 5 full business days after the meeting to file in court or petition the state for binding arbitration. If the board never holds the meeting, the recall is deemed effective under paragraph (f). Check each agreement or ballot against these statutory tests before the meeting: 1. Signed by an owner with a vote, and no more than 120 days old. 2. A separate vote for each director named, under paragraph (j). 3. If a majority of the board is targeted, at least as many replacement candidates listed as directors being recalled. 4. Any written rescission counts only if it reached the association before the petition was served. Also check the calendar. Paragraph (l) bars the state and the courts from accepting any recall filing when the targeted director's scheduled reelection is 60 or fewer days away, or when that director was elected 60 or fewer days ago. Tell the attorney if either applies. A recalled director must turn over all association records and property within 5 full business days. If they refuse, paragraph (h) lets the association ask the circuit court for a summary order.

Texas: a member vote on signed ballots

Chapter 209 of the Property Code has no recall procedure of its own, so most Texas HOAs, which are nonprofit corporations, start with the Business Organizations Code. Section 22.211 says a director may be removed under any procedure in the certificate of formation or bylaws. If those documents say nothing, the members who elected the director can remove them, with or without cause, by the same vote it took to elect them. Section 22.155 lets members holding at least one-tenth of the votes call a special meeting, unless the documents set another route. Once the petition passes your bylaws' count, the board sets the meeting. Property Code section 209.0056(a) requires written notice of an owners' vote at a meeting no sooner than the 60th day and no later than the 10th day before it. Section 209.0058(a)(5) requires a written, signed ballot on a proposed removal of a board member, and section 209.00592 lets owners vote by absentee or electronic ballot if the association offers them. After the vote, any owner can demand a recount within 15 days under section 209.0057, so keep every ballot. Our guide on responding to a petition for a special meeting walks through the signature count and notice in more detail.

Colorado: 67 percent of those present

C.R.S. 38-33.3-303(8) lets owners remove any executive board member, with or without cause, by a vote of 67 percent of all persons present and entitled to vote at a meeting where a quorum is present. The declaration and bylaws cannot change that number. Directors appointed by the declarant, or elected by a class vote under section 38-33.3-207(4), are outside it. Section 38-33.3-308(1) lets owners holding 20 percent of the votes, or any lower share the bylaws set, call a special meeting. Notice goes out 10 to 50 days ahead by hand delivery or prepaid mail, is posted in the community where practical, and must list any proposal to remove a board member on the agenda. If the vote is by secret ballot, section 38-33.3-310(1)(b) has ballots counted by a neutral third party or by owner volunteers picked at the open meeting who are not board members.

Wording for the motion and the minutes

In Florida, the minutes of the certification meeting are an official record, and paragraph (i) sets their contents: the date and time, the board's decision and the vote count for each director subject to the recall. If the board rejects any ballot, the minutes must list the parcel number and the specific reason for each rejection. A certifying motion can read: "I move that the board certify the written recall agreements served on the association by certified mail on [date]. The count is [number] valid votes of [total] total voting interests for the recall of [Director A] and [number] for the recall of [Director B]. The recall of each director is effective immediately, and each recalled director is directed to deliver all association records and property to the board by [date]." If the board will not certify, write the reasons ballot by ballot in a table: parcel number, owner name and reason, such as "signed by a non-owner" or "dated more than 120 days before service". A vague "insufficient signatures" will not hold up in front of an arbitrator. Then add a motion directing the president to file the arbitration petition or court action within the statutory window.

A Florida timeline, start to finish

Day 0, a Monday: agreements arrive by certified mail. The secretary logs them and emails the board and the attorney. Days 1 and 2: the secretary and a non-targeted director check each agreement against the owner roll and the four tests above. Notice of a board meeting is posted at least 48 hours ahead. Day 4 or 5: the board meets, votes to certify or not, and records the count per director. If certified, the recall is effective at once. Within 5 full business days after that meeting: recalled directors turn over records and property. If the board did not certify, the court action or arbitration petition is filed in the same window. Afterward: fill the seats. Under paragraph (e), if fewer than a majority of directors were removed, the remaining directors may fill the vacancies. If a majority or more were removed, the owners who voted for the recall fill them. Our guide on filling an HOA board vacancy covers the steps once the seats are open.

Mistakes that turn a recall into a lawsuit

The most expensive mistake is the slow one. A Florida board that waits for its next regular meeting has lost: paragraph (f) makes the recall effective by default. Calendar the deadline the day the petition arrives. The second is counting the wrong denominator. Florida uses total voting interests; Colorado uses 67 percent of those present at a meeting with a quorum; Texas defaults to the vote it took to elect the director. Write the formula into the minutes next to the count. The third is letting the targeted directors run the count, choose the inspector or decide which ballots fail. Even where the law does not forbid it, an owner who sees that will assume the result was rigged. The fourth is treating a recall as a reason to stop running the association. Pay the bills, answer records requests and keep the meetings open. Owners who signed the petition are watching to see whether the board follows its own rules, and a clean, documented process is the board's best answer either way.

Sources

These guides are general education for HOA boards and residents, not legal, tax, or financial advice. Rules vary by state and by your community's governing documents - check with a professional for your situation.

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