HOA Directors Have a Duty to Protect Confidential Information

It is not uncommon for homeowners’ associations to experience situations that involve a current or former board member disclosing confidential information to association members. Such disclosures are breaches of the disclosing director’s duty to maintain the confidentiality of information that the director obtains during his or her participation as a member of association’s board of directors. Even though the fiduciary duties of a director terminate when the director ends his or her term on an association’s board of directors, the duty to protect and preserve confidential information the director received during his or her service as a director continues after the director leaves the board.

The authority to release information about an association is vested in the association’s board of directors acting as a whole, and not by any individual director. Accordingly, directors, or former directors, who release information without having been authorized to do so by the board could face: