2026-09-12 · Minnesota · Courts

What happened. Two Minnesota Court of Appeals decisions, sixteen months apart, together set out one of the most consequential and least understood rules in Minnesota association law: private covenants expire after 30 years unless an exception applies.

Both are nonprecedential — under Minn. R. Civ. App. P. 136.01, subd. 1(c), persuasive authority only, not binding precedent.

The statute

Minn. Stat. § 500.20, subd. 2a provides that all private covenants “cease to be valid and operative 30 years after the date of the deed, or other instrument… creating them, and may be disregarded.” Eight exceptions follow.¹

Eagle's Landing: the clock cannot be restarted

Eagle's Landing Owners Association v. Cleary, No. A24-0284, decided 23 December 2024, reversed and remanded a summary judgment the association had won over $555.99 in unpaid assessments.²

Covenants created in June 1993 “cease[d] to be valid and operative” in June 2023. A 2018 amendment purporting to make them perpetual did not restart the clock — the 30 years run from “the date of the… instrument… creating” them.

The court relied on Haugen v. Peterson, 400 N.W.2d 723, 726 (Minn. 1987): the words “shall cease to be valid and operative” “denote termination, not suspension,” the statute “did not permit an automatic renewal,” and once void the covenants “remain void and cannot be resurrected.”

And the line that matters most for collections practice: “There is no waiver exception to Minnesota Statutes section 500.20, subdivision 2a.” Paying assessments for years does not waive the expiration argument.

Two more holdings in the same case

A PUD rider does not create the obligation. “[T]he plain language of the PUD rider limits its application to the extent that an obligation existed in respondent's constituent documents.” A mortgage rider cannot manufacture an assessment duty the association's own documents do not create.

Conflicting membership definitions go to a jury. Where the articles of incorporation and the bylaws disagreed about who was a member — the bylaws repeatedly named “Eagles Landing First Addition” while omitting “Eagles Landing” — the documents were ambiguous, interpretation became a fact question, and summary judgment was improper. Repeated omissions are not a scrivener's error.

1. Minn. Stat. § 500.20 — private covenants; 30-year limit and exceptions ↩
2. Eagle’s Landing Owners Ass’n v. Cleary, No. A24-0284 (Minn. Ct. App. 23 Dec. 2024) (nonprecedential) — slip opinion ↩
3. Reed v. Highlands of Edinburgh Sixth Ass’n, No. A25-1442 (Minn. Ct. App. 27 Apr. 2026) (nonprecedential) — slip opinion ↩
4. Minn. Stat. § 515B.1-102 — applicability of MCIOA by community type and creation date ↩