Exit clause
The written terms on which a member leaves, or the community winds itself up. Agreed while everyone is still calm, which is the only time it can be.
Nothing on this page is a prediction. Use it as a set of things to check against a real community and against your own group: ask what nearly ended this place, and what changed afterwards. A community that can answer both has survived something and learned from it, which is the only evidence of resilience anybody can actually show you.
An exit clause is the part of a community’s agreements that says what happens when somebody leaves — and, in the better-prepared groups, what happens if the community itself ends.
It covers notice, how a stake is valued, how long payment takes, what happens if the leaver and the community disagree about the number, and on what grounds the community may ask somebody to go.
Why it belongs at the beginning
An exit clause written at the point of exit is a negotiation between people who are already unhappy with each other. Written at the start, it is an ordinary piece of admin that everybody can be fair about because nobody knows who it will apply to.
This is also the honest test of whether a community has thought about its own worst day. A group that has agreed how it would dissolve — sell the asset, settle debts, distribute what remains on a stated basis — has considered a possibility most groups find too uncomfortable to name.
The dissolution half
Deliberate dissolution is not a failure. A group that decides, while it still can, that this is not working, sells up, pays everyone out on agreed terms and goes has executed a governance success. The alternative is a slow attritional decline in which the last three members are left holding a building and each other’s resentment.
That option only exists if somebody wrote it down while things were going well.
Sources & further reading
- 1 Why communities end — endings that are not failures
- 2 What joining costs — the exit number, with a calculator
Written by EcoHubs members, with AI assistance for drafting and editing, and reviewed by a person before publication. Facts are checked against the sources listed; anything we could not verify is marked. How this is written
Related terms
The document setting out what a member pays, contributes, may decide, and receives on leaving. The eight things a good one covers are checkable.
The rule that sets what you may sell a home for. It is why the home stays affordable for the household after you, and why your gain is capped.
The slow failure where nothing breaks. Agreements stop being read, shared habits thin out, and nobody ever decided any of it.