What a planned-community board does not have

Stated as a list, the absence is striking. A Maine HOA that is not a condominium has no statutory:

• assessment-lien provision — no equivalent of § 1603-116, which gives a condominium association a lien for unpaid assessments and a foreclosure route
• records-inspection right — no equivalent of § 1603-118; owners fall back on the Nonprofit Corporation Act's inspection provisions and on the covenants
• meeting, quorum or notice floor — including nothing like the 10-day budget-ratification window at the Condominium Act's budget provision
• fining procedure — no equivalent of § 1603-102(a)(11) and its requirement of notice and an opportunity to be heard
• resale-disclosure requirement — no equivalent of the § 1604-108 resale certificate
• amendment threshold — no equivalent of § 1602-117, including its unanimous-consent rule for use restrictions
• insurance floor — no equivalent of § 1603-113

The consequence runs in both directions, which is the part boards often miss. A planned-community board has fewer statutory duties and fewer statutory powers. If the declaration does not grant a lien, there is no lien to assert. If the covenants are silent on fines, the authority to fine has to be found in them or it is not there. Maine supplies no default.

The exception that has started to appear

One new statute does reach across the condominium line, and it is worth noting precisely because it is the first of its kind.

33 M.R.S. § 576-A, the EV-charging provision effective 1 January 2026, applies to an association of unit owners in a common interest community, borrowing the broad definition at Title 38, § 3002(3). It is physically located in chapter 10 — the 1965 act's chapter — yet reaches well beyond both condominium statutes.

Which means a Maine planned community with no statutory framework of any kind now has a statutory obligation with a hard clock: acknowledge an EV-charger application in writing within 30 days, decide within 60, and silence past 60 days is an approval. For many planned-community boards that is the only operational deadline Maine law imposes on them at all.

How Maine compares, and why it is in play

Maine's condominium coverage descends from the 1980 Uniform Condominium Act, which groups it with Pennsylvania and Texas rather than with the states that adopted the broader Uniform Common Interest Ownership Act — Connecticut, Vermont and Washington among them. The uniform act's own text covers condominiums, planned communities of single-family homes, and real-estate cooperatives as one category. Maine splits the first and omits the second.

Appeals are single-tier: a contested association dispute runs from the Superior Court directly to the Maine Supreme Judicial Court sitting as the Law Court. There is no intermediate appellate court, which is part of why Maine has comparatively little appellate authority on covenant questions — and why the recent run of decisions matters disproportionately. The Village at Ocean's End, 2025 ME 85, construed the Condominium Act's declarant development rights for the first time; Maples v. Compass Harbor, 2025 ME 19, did the same for its judgment-lien provision.

What this actually means for a board

1. Establish which statute, if any, applies to you. Pull the recording date of the declaration. Before 1 January 1983 means the Unit Ownership Act; on or after means chapter 31; neither, if you are a planned community.
2. Read your covenants as the source of authority, not as a summary of it. In a planned community, a power not granted in the documents is generally not available from statute.
3. Check the corporate layer. If the association is a Title 13-B nonprofit corporation, its governance, indemnification and records rules come from there — and so does the annual-report filing duty whose neglect can end in administrative dissolution.
4. Treat § 576-A as binding regardless. It does not care which statute governs you.

What to watch next

The Commission to Study the Need to Codify or Recodify Laws Regarding Residential Community Ownership Associations, created by Resolve 2025, chapter 167, holds its first meeting on 30 September 2026 and reports by 1 December 2026. Closing this gap for planned communities is the clearest thing the uniform act would do if Maine adopted it. Whether the commission recommends that, and whether the 133rd Legislature acts on it in 2027, are open questions, and this column does not predict them.