Bylaws are the association's operating manual: how many directors there are, how officers are chosen, how meetings are run, and how the document is changed. They are also the governing documents that owners are least likely to have read, and the ones most likely to be sitting in a management company's filing cabinet rather than anywhere you can find them.

Your Bylaws Are Recorded, Not Filed With the State

This can be confusing.  Articles of incorporation get filed with the Division of Corporations. Bylaws do not. Under Section 57-8a-216, an association shall file its bylaws for recording in the office of the recorder of each county in which any part of the association's real estate sits. This also means that an association that straddles two counties must record its bylaws in both.

There is a deadline: no later than the first lot sale date. If the association misses it, the board may file them for recording afterward. Amended bylaws are recorded the same way.

The practical upshot for an owner is that you do not need the board's cooperation to read them. They are a public record at the county recorder's office in the county where you live.

What Your Bylaws Have to Cover

Section 57-8a-216(2) lists eight things the bylaws must state:

• the number of board members;
• the title of each officer;
• how officers are elected, by the board or, if the declaration requires, by the lot owners;
• the qualifications, powers, duties, and terms of board members and officers, plus how to remove one and how to fill a vacancy;
• what powers the board or officers may delegate to someone else or to a managing agent;
• which officers may prepare, execute, certify, and record amendments to the declaration;
• a method for the board or the lot owners to amend the bylaws, consistent with Section 16-6a-1010; and
• anything else necessary or appropriate for running the association, expressly including meetings, voting requirements, and quorum requirements.

If your bylaws are silent on one of these, that is worth raising with the board. The list is what the statute requires the document to contain.

The Declaration Can Override Almost All of It

Read the opening words of that list carefully: unless otherwise provided in the declaration. The eight requirements are defaults. Your declaration can displace them, and the last item is expressly subject to the declaration and to anything the Act or the declaration requires to appear in the declaration itself.

So the answer to most "what do our bylaws have to say" questions is: start with the declaration, then read the bylaws against it.

Where Bylaws Rank Against Everything Else

Section 57-8a-228(5) establishes a strict order of precedence for documents that conflict. From strongest to weakest:

1. the Community Association Act itself;
2. Title 16, Chapter 6a, the Utah Revised Nonprofit Corporation Act, or whatever law the entity was organized under;
3. the plat and the declaration, which control equally;
4. organizational documents filed with the state, such as the articles of incorporation;
5. the bylaws; and
6. rules or policies adopted by the board, which yield to everything above them.

There is one express exception running the other way. Under Section 57-8a-228, organizational documents may include indemnification and liability limitation provisions for board members, officers, or similar persons in positions of control, notwithstanding any conflict with the declaration or the recorded bylaws.

Changing the Bylaws

The bylaws must contain the amendment method, and that method must be consistent with Section 16-6a-1010 of the Nonprofit Corporation Act. Whatever the process, the amended bylaws go back to the county recorder. Recording is not optional housekeeping; it is how the amendment becomes part of your community's public record.

Where to Go Next

You should have received a copy of your bylaws when you purchased your home. If you don’t have a copy, start at the county recorder's office in the county where your lot sits, or ask your board or manager. If your association has never recorded its bylaws, or will not tell you where they are recorded, that is a statutory question the Office of the Homeowners' Association Ombudsman can address. 

Reviewed against the Utah Code, current as of August 10, 2026.