About the Pleasant Brook Association

The Pleasant Brook Association is a trust set up under Massachusetts Law. A Declaration of Trust filed in the South Middlesex Registry of Deeds spells out the details of what it can do and how it is run. In brief, it has legal authority to hold and maintain common property on behalf of the beneficiaries (i.e., those who own and live in homes in the area covered by the trust provisions) and to define, modify, and enforce restrictions on what the beneficiaries can do with their houses and land. The Association acts through a board of five trustees, elected by the beneficiaries, who serve 2-year terms. To be valid, an action taken by the board requires the approval of three trustees.

Although it has the power to hold land, the Pleasant Brook Association doesn't hold any. The founders of the trust probably modeled it on the Peacock Farms Association, which owns and operates its neighborhood swimming pool. However, the Pleasant Brook pool was set up as a separate corporation that owns the land the pool is on. So a good many of the provisions in the Declaration have very little to do with neighborhood reality.

Note: Because the Pleasant Brook Pool is incorporated separately from the PBA, pool membership is not something that automatically comes with your house. Membership must be purchased separately from the pool corporation. PBA members selling a house have sometimes sold a current pool membership with it — this is a private arrangement between buyer and seller that does not involve the PBA.

Three documents define the Pleasant Brook Association:

The Declaration of Trust sets it up and defines its powers and procedures. The By-Laws add detail, not contradicting anything in the Declaration, but making some of its general provisions more specific. (For example, they lay down rules for quorums, proxy voting, and suchlike.)

The third document is of another kind: a subdivision plan or map that the Declaration cites to define the "Pleasant Brook Area." Everyone who owns property within this area is declared to be a beneficiary of the trust and therefore has certain rights and obligations spelled out in the Declaration, the By-Laws, and some specific property use restrictions defined in other documents.

Here are links to the Declaration of Trust and the By-Laws:

	Declaration of Trust (HTML text with a plain-language summary of the contents)
	Declaration of Trust (PDF copy of original typescript)
	By-Laws (HTML text)
	By-Laws (PDF copy of original typescript)

HTML text is big and easy to read on the screen; PDF copies are harder to read but easier to print. Because a good deal of the Declaration of Trust is written in dense legalese, a plain-language summary (with a few interspersed comments) is provided. To see the summary and comments for a paragraph, click the Summary button at the end of that paragraph. The By-Laws contain some legalese, mostly copied from the Declaration, but in general they're easy enough to follow without a translation.

Important Notice: Please be aware that neither the summary nor the comments (which are labeled "Comment:" and written in green italics) have any legal force. Legally speaking, the original document is all that counts. Comments and interpretations represent the author's opinion only.

This page last updated 8/31/2005