2026-09-10 · Indiana · Courts

What happened. An Indiana homeowner stopped paying his assessments because his association had stopped doing almost everything else — no annual meetings, no director elections, no budget, for years. On 12 March 2025 the Indiana Court of Appeals told him that was not a defence, and affirmed a judgment against him of roughly $39,000 plus attorney fees.¹

The decision is Andy Sandoval and The Paradise Properties Land Trust v. Willow Lake Estates Home Owners Association, Inc., No. 24A-MF-309. It is a published opinion, which means it binds Indiana trial courts.

The argument the owner made

Sandoval's position had a certain logic to it. The association, he said, had not held the annual meetings its own bylaws required, had not put directors up for election, and had not prepared an annual budget — so on what authority was it levying anything at all? He treated the assessments as void and withheld payment. The dispute ran roughly seven years and through two lawsuits before it reached the Court of Appeals.

Why it failed

The court answered in two moves, and the first one is the one most Indiana readers will not see coming.

Move one: the Homeowners Association Act did not apply. Willow Lake Estates was formed in 1989. Indiana's HOA article, IC 32-25.5, reaches associations formed after 30 June 2009 unless an older association affirmatively elects into it — and this one never had. So the budget and meeting duties Sandoval was pointing to were not, for this association, statutory duties at all.

Move two: the Nonprofit Corporation Act forecloses the remedy anyway. Like most Indiana associations, Willow Lake is a nonprofit corporation, and IC 23-17-10-1(i)(1) is explicit that the failure to hold a meeting on time does not:

“[a]ffect the validity of any corporate action.”

The court then looked at the association's own covenants and bylaws and found nothing making an annual meeting, or an adopted budget, a condition precedent to levying assessments. Its conclusion is one sentence long:

“The HOA's failure to hold annual meetings and prepare a budget, thus, does not excuse Sandoval from paying periodic assessments.”

Judgment for the association was affirmed, as was the denial of Sandoval's motion to correct error.

1. Sandoval v. Willow Lake Estates Home Owners Ass'n, No. 24A-MF-309 (Ind. Ct. App. Mar. 12, 2025) (slip op.) ↩
2. Plews Shadley Racher & Braun LLP, analysis of Sandoval (Mar. 17, 2025) ↩
3. KSN Law, “Indiana Court of Appeals Expands HOA Assessment Ruling in Sandoval v. Willow Lake Estates” (May 9, 2025) ↩