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Potentially Invalid Pet Restrictions?

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Kfauber

Junior Member
What is the name of your state? Dayton, Ohio

We own a condo in a suburb of Dayton OH. The community consists of roughly 250 units with a mix of Townhouses, patio home style, and 1 midrise building. The unit we own is in the Midrise building which has 18 units.

The association bylaws have no restriction of pets at all. However about 20 years ago a group of owners who lived in the midrise at the time one of them being an attorney got together and drafted a covenant only pertaining to the midrise, Prohibiting Pets and Children. However the association bylaws make no such restrictions. Also it is illegal for them to even try and prohibit my children since the community is not zoned as a retirement community.

Only 1 of the original owners who signed this 20 year old "covenenat" even still lives in the building, and is the only person still wanting to enforce the exclusion of pets. She also just happens to be the buildings representative on the Association Board.

The actual board of directors refuses to enforce this rule or even address this old covenant with the association attorney since it is not an association rule. They only say this is a midrise issue. But that does not help us.

This resident that is trying to enforce this rule has even gone as far as sending letters to potential buyers of units in the building that pets are not allowed, we have coppies of one of the letters, and she has successfully disrupted one sale because of this.

I know for a fact pets have been in this building for at least the past 11 years but all just cats. The sale that was disrtupted involved a buyer wanting to bring a small dog into the building. This is the issue that has reignigted this whole pet issue again.

Can a seperate rule for one set of units be enacted and enforced by members of those units without support from the actual condo association?

Also since part of this original covenant regarding the prohibition of children in the building is against the law does this immediately cause the entire covenant to be null since the covenant has never been ammended?

Could someone who knows the law please advise us, we would like to put and end to this silly matter officially and prevent this single owner from interfereing in any future sales of units
 
Last edited:


BelizeBreeze

Senior Member
you need to take the covenents and current bylaws to a local attorney for review. My first impression is that the covenents are Illegal on their face but without reading both, that's just an opinion, NOT advice.
 

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