Updated September 4, 2026. Quick answer: Kentucky needs only a board-adopted budget for routine assessments, but an emergency special assessment requires a licensed engineer or architect’s sealed opinion plus a majority owner or 75% board vote.
Key statute: KRS 381.9191 (Assessments for common expenses); KRS 381.9193 (Lien for assessments); KRS 381.9167 (Powers of unit owners’ association, emergency assessments)
How Kentucky lets an association approve it
Routine assessments need only board or association action, not owner ratification: KRS 381.9191(1) provides that “assessments shall be made at least annually and based on a budget adopted at least annually by the association.” An emergency special assessment works differently. Under KRS 381.9167(3)-(4), the association may impose one to comply with a judicial order or to “[r]epair an emergency condition of any common structural, utility, or mechanical component which has made, or is in imminent danger of making, any unit, common element, or limited common element unsafe, uninhabitable, or uninsurable,” but only after the association is first provided “an opinion affixed with a professional seal from a professional engineer or licensed architect stating the emergency condition.” The assessment itself must then be approved by either “[a] simple majority of unit owners present at a special called meeting” or “[s]eventy-five percent (75%) of the members of the association’s executive board,” and it “may be reduced or rescinded by a vote of a simple majority of total unit owners at a special meeting.”
The notice you’re owed
The emergency-assessment vote must happen at “a special called meeting,” and if your declaration does not already provide for special meetings, one can be called specifically to address the emergency. Kentucky’s statute does not itself specify how many days of notice that meeting requires; that detail is left to the declaration or the Act’s general meeting-notice provisions. For routine annual assessments, the law sets no specific notice period at all.
Paying it: plan, interest, and late fees
Kentucky law does not create a standalone right to a payment plan; that remains a declaration/bylaws matter, though the lien statute does presume installment assessments can exist: if an assessment is payable in installments, the lien covers the full amount as of when the first installment comes due. Interest is capped by statute: past-due assessments “bear interest at the rate established by the association not exceeding eighteen percent (18%) per year.” The association can also impose late-payment charges, but the law does not set a specific dollar or percentage cap on those separate from the 18% interest cap.
Unpaid assessments and fines become a lien on the unit from the time they become due, foreclosable like a mortgage, with priority senior to most encumbrances except pre-declaration liens, an earlier-recorded mortgage, and tax liens, and the lien is extinguished if not enforced within five years.
Does Kentucky require a reserve study?
No. Kentucky requires associations to fund a replacement reserve, but the sections governing assessments, emergency powers, and liens do not require a periodic professional reserve study, funding-adequacy study, or structural inspection comparable to Florida’s post-Surfside SIRS law.
Honest gaps
The exact number of notice days required for the emergency-assessment special meeting could not be confirmed from a primary source this session. Every other fact here comes directly from the official Kentucky Legislative Research Commission text.
Source note. Read from https://apps.legislature.ky.gov/law/statutes/statute.aspx?id=36859 (KRS 381.9191, full text extracted from the official Kentucky LRC PDF); https://apps.legislature.ky.gov/law/statutes/statute.aspx?id=36861 (KRS 381.9193, official PDF); https://apps.legislature.ky.gov/law/statutes/statute.aspx?id=40011 (KRS 381.9167, official PDF) on September 4, 2026.
Related: HOA rules in a 55+ community · how a special-assessment foreclosure actually works · lump sum vs. a payment plan.
General information drawn from each state’s own statutes as read at its official legislature or code-publisher site (or a verbatim codified mirror where noted), not legal advice. Special-assessment law is state law, and every association’s own declaration and bylaws add rules on top of the statutory floor described here. We are not a law firm and this is not legal advice.