Florida Board Director Eligibility Calculator

How this calculator works

Florida community-association statutes impose four substantive eligibility tests on every candidate for the board of a condominium or HOA, plus a procedural candidate-notice deadline. A candidate must clear all four substantive gates and meet the procedural deadline to be seated. Most Florida director-eligibility disputes — and Florida produces dozens of them every election cycle — arise from one of these five issues.

The calculator walks each gate in turn and returns a single verdict — Eligible, Conditionally Eligible, or Ineligible — with the specific disqualifying factors flagged, the cure path identified where one exists, and the operative statute (Chapter 718 for condos, Chapter 720 for HOAs) cited for every result.

The four substantive gates

1. 90-day monetary delinquency

A candidate who is more than 90 days delinquent in any monetary obligation to the association is ineligible. The rule comes from F.S. § 718.112(2)(d)2 for condominiums and F.S. § 720.306(9)(a) for HOAs. "Any monetary obligation" is read broadly: assessments, special assessments, fines that have ripened into a monetary obligation, late fees, and attorney-fee reimbursements all count. The clock runs from the obligation's due date.

The disqualification is curable. A candidate who pays the delinquency in full before qualifying for the seat is eligible. Partial payment does not cure — the cure must be complete. The candidate should obtain a paid-in-full ledger entry from the association as documentation. Florida case law is consistent that a cured delinquency restores eligibility, but the cure must be in place before the candidate-notice deadline runs.

2. Prior felony with the 5-year civil-rights window

A candidate with a prior felony conviction is ineligible unless civil rights have been restored at least 5 years before qualifying for the seat. F.S. § 718.112(2)(d)4 governs condominiums; F.S. § 720.306(9)(b) governs HOAs.

Two important details. First, the 5-year clock runs from the date civil rights were restored — not from the offense date, the conviction date, or the release date. A 30-year-old felony with unrestored rights is still disqualifying. Second, "felony" means any felony, Florida or out-of-state, state or federal. Misdemeanors do not trigger this gate.

Florida civil-rights restoration is administered by the Florida Commission on Offender Review through the clemency process. After completing all terms of the sentence (probation, restitution, supervised release), an applicant files for clemency. Restoration is automatic for many non-violent felonies under Amendment 4 (2018), discretionary for violent or sex-offense convictions. The result is an RR-1 or RR-2 certificate restoring civil rights. The 5-year director-eligibility clock runs from the date on that certificate.

3. 90-day post-election certification

Newly-elected directors must certify within 90 days of election, or the seat is vacated by operation of statute. F.S. § 718.112(2)(d)4 governs condominiums; F.S. § 720.3033(1) governs HOAs.

Certification has two paths. The first is signing a written statement acknowledging the director has read the governing documents (declaration, bylaws, articles, rules) and will faithfully discharge fiduciary duties. The second is completing a DBPR-approved board-member education course. Many Florida declarations require the education course; the written acknowledgment is the statutory fallback.

If neither is completed within the 90-day window, the seat is vacated automatically — the board does not need to take any action, and the membership does not need to vote. The vacancy is then filled per the declaration and bylaws, typically by board appointment.

A candidate who is not yet certified can still run, win, and certify post-election. The calculator captures this conditional path: a candidate willing to certify within 90 days is Conditionally Eligible; one unwilling is effectively Ineligible because the seat would be vacated immediately after the certification deadline runs.

4. Co-owner / co-occupancy restriction

Co-owners of the same unit or parcel generally cannot both serve as directors simultaneously. F.S. § 718.112(2)(d)2 is the operative provision for condominiums; HOAs follow a parallel rule under § 720.306(9). The rationale is to avoid concentration of board votes in a single ownership interest.

The declaration may override this default. A small number of Florida declarations expressly authorize co-owners to serve together, often in the context of small-association governance where finding enough willing candidates is itself a challenge. Verify the declaration language carefully — the override must be express, not implied.

The procedural gate: candidate notice

Even a candidate who clears all four substantive gates is ineligible if the candidate notice was not submitted on time. For Florida condominiums, F.S. § 718.112(2)(d)4 requires written notice of intent to be a candidate at least 40 days before the election. For HOAs, deadlines are typically set by the governing documents under § 720.306(9); most HOA bylaws follow the 40-day condo model but some specify 30 or 60 days.

Late submission is generally fatal for the current cycle. The supervisor of election (or the equivalent under the HOA's governing documents) removes the name from the ballot regardless of substantive eligibility. The candidate must wait for the next election to refile.

Verdict precedence

Several gates can fire at once. The calculator orders them by severity:

1. Hard disqualifiers — uncured 90-day delinquency, felony without civil rights restored, declaration-blocked co-owner overlap, unwillingness to commit to certification, and missed candidate notice — render the candidate Ineligible.
2. Conditional disqualifiers — felony within the 5-year window (cure: wait), uncertified-but-willing-to-certify (cure: complete within 90 days of election), missed notice for current cycle (cure: timely submission next cycle) — render the candidate Conditionally Eligible.
3. All gates clear → Eligible.

When both hard and conditional disqualifiers fire, the verdict resolves to Ineligible — the hard ground governs. The calculator lists every disqualifying factor so the candidate sees the full picture, not just the most severe one.

A worked example: the 7-year-old felony

A Florida candidate has a prior felony conviction from 7 years ago. Civil rights were restored 6 years ago via an RR-1 certificate from the Florida Commission on Offender Review. The candidate is current on all monetary obligations, has already completed the DBPR board-certification course, is the sole owner of the unit, and submitted the candidate notice 50 days before the election.

Gates: delinquency (clear), felony with restoration 6 years ago (clear — 6 years exceeds the 5-year statutory window measured from restoration), certification (clear — already certified), co-occupancy (clear — sole owner), candidate notice (clear — 50 days under the 40-day deadline). Verdict: Eligible.

Now change one fact: civil rights were restored only 4 years ago. The other gates are unchanged. The felony gate now fails — 4 years is under the 5-year statutory window. The cure path is to wait one more year before qualifying. Verdict: Conditionally Eligible (with a cure-action note pointing to the remaining 1.0 year). The candidate becomes Eligible one year from now.

The difference between 6 years and 4 years is the entire decision. Florida courts have applied this rule strictly: a candidate inside the 5-year window is disqualified, regardless of the underlying offense's character or the candidate's intervening conduct. The clock is the clock.

What the calculator does not do

This calculator is a planning and screening tool. It does not:

• Verify the underlying facts. The calculator takes the candidate's answers at face value. The association's candidate-eligibility committee must verify the facts (ledger pull for delinquency, RR certificate for rights restoration, certification record from the DBPR-approved provider).
• Apply non-Florida law. Out-of-state felony convictions count, but the civil-rights-restoration analysis follows Florida's clock. A candidate restored in another state must obtain Florida restoration for the 5-year clock to run; the Commission on Offender Review handles this process.
• Replace legal counsel for contested cases. Director-eligibility challenges that reach the Florida Division of Condominiums (Chapter 718) or circuit court (Chapter 720) involve procedural complexity beyond this calculator's scope. Engage a Florida community-association attorney for any contested case, particularly mid-term removal questions where the case law is unsettled.
• Address developer-appointed directors during turnover. F.S. § 718.301 and § 720.307 govern turnover, when the developer holds the board. Developer-appointed directors operate under separate statutory rules; this calculator addresses elected directors only.

How this page is maintained

The substantive eligibility provisions (90-day delinquency, 5-year civil-rights window, 90-day certification, co-occupancy default) have been stable through the 2024–2026 legislative sessions. HB 1021 (2024) refined some certification mechanics and the Chapter 720 director-removal procedure but did not change the underlying eligibility gates. We monitor each Florida legislative session and re-stamp this page within the quarter after any substantive change.

Last reviewed: 2026-05-15 against F.S. § 718.112(2)(d), § 720.306(9), § 720.3033.