Minnesota's 30-year covenant clock can kill a declaration — and a 2018 amendment won't restart it
Minnesota's 30-year covenant clock can kill a declaration — and a 2018 amendment won't restart it
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Both are nonprecedential — under Minn.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 P. 136.01, subd. 1(c), persuasive authority only, not binding precedent.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.
Reed: the exception is broad, if you plead it
Sixteen months later the Court of Appeals decided Reed v. The Highlands of Edinburgh Sixth Association, No. A25-1442, on 27 April 2026, affirming for the association.3
After the association recorded an assessment lien in June 2024 and began foreclosing in January 2025, the owner petitioned under Minn. Stat. § 514.99 to invalidate the lien, arguing the 1986 declaration had expired under § 500.20.
The court agreed the 40-year-old declaration was expired unless an exception applied — and then held one did. Under exception 2a(4), the instrument need only “authorize and empower” the association to hold title to common real estate; it need not actually grant or recognise title.
What satisfied it was modest: provisions for “common areas” and “special common areas” — cul-de-sac islands and parts of two lots, with association maintenance duties for fences, berms and plantings. The court said these “more than satisf[y]” the exception.
And it expressly limited the earlier case: Eagle's Landing did not address the eight exceptions, because the association there never argued they applied, so it “has no bearing where, as here, a party invokes an exception.”
Read together, the rule is procedural as much as substantive
The 30-year clock is real and fatal. The exceptions are broad. The difference between the two outcomes was whether the association pleaded an exception.
That is an uncomfortable place for a Minnesota association to be, because it means the defence has to be identified before the litigation rather than during it. An association whose counsel argues expiration on the merits without reaching § 500.20's exceptions is repeating the Eagle's Landing mistake.
The practical instruction for any Minnesota association whose declaration is approaching or past 30 years:
Date the instrument, not the community. The 30 years runs from the recorded instrument creating the covenants. Phased developments have multiple instruments and therefore multiple clocks.
Identify which exception applies, in writing, now. Not when a delinquent owner raises it. Exception 2a(4) — authorisation to hold title to common real estate — is the one most associations will reach, and Reed shows how little it takes to satisfy. But it takes something: a covenant-only subdivision with no common areas at all may have nothing to point at.
Do not rely on an amendment to have restarted anything. Eagle's Landing is explicit that it does not.
Do not rely on years of payment. There is no waiver exception.
Reed's other two holdings
The decision is useful beyond the 30-year point, on two questions that recur in Minnesota collection disputes.
A § 514.99 petition is narrow. It reaches only the threshold question whether the lien is a “nonconsensual common law lien.” A court need not reach the lien amount or the foreclosure process in that proceeding. Owners using § 514.99 as a general-purpose challenge to an assessment lien are using the wrong vehicle.
A recorded declaration makes the lien consensual. Where the declaration expressly provides for assessment liens, “members who buy property subject to the declaration give contractual consent to the placement of liens,” and constructive notice from recording under Minn. Stat. § 507.32 binds a later purchaser.
The applicability point both cases confirm
Both associations were outside MCIOA, and the court said so directly in Reed: “The MCIOA generally does not apply to planned communities that, like the association, were created before June 1, 1994. Minn. Stat. § 515B.1-102(b)(3).”
Pre-1994 planned communities are governed by common law, where governing documents are a contract — Harkins v. Grant Park Association, 972 N.W.2d 381, 388 (Minn. 2022).
Eagle's Landing added a related refinement worth holding onto: real estate meeting the statutory definition “is a [common interest community] whether or not it is subject to… chapter [515B],” citing Minn. Stat. § 515B.1-103(10). Being a CIC and being governed by MCIOA are two different things.
This is the same split that determines whether Minnesota's 2026 HOA Bill of Rights reaches a community at all. Chapter 82's $100 fine cap, hearing rights, open meetings and bidding mandate bind a 1979 condominium and do not bind a 1979 townhome association.
Why this matters more from 2027
Chapter 82 gives owners in covered communities a substantial set of statutory tools. Owners in excluded communities have their declaration, contract law, and Minn. Stat. § 500.20.
For those owners, the 30-year argument is not a technicality — it is one of the few structural arguments available. Expect it to be raised more often, and expect associations that have never checked their exception to be the ones caught.
What to watch next
Petition-for-review status could not be verified for either decision. Eagle's Landing was still being cited and distinguished by the Court of Appeals in April 2026, which suggests it remains good — if nonbinding — authority.
Nothing is pending legislatively. Section 500.20 was not amended in the 2025 regular session, the 2025 special session, or the 2026 session.
These describe decided cases. They do not predict how any particular declaration or lien dispute comes out.
Related Minnesota HOA Topics
- Minn. Stat. § 500.20 — private covenants; 30-year limit and exceptions ↩
- Eagle’s Landing Owners Ass’n v. Cleary, No. A24-0284 (Minn. Ct. App. 23 Dec. 2024) (nonprecedential) — slip opinion ↩
- Reed v. Highlands of Edinburgh Sixth Ass’n, No. A25-1442 (Minn. Ct. App. 27 Apr. 2026) (nonprecedential) — slip opinion ↩
- Minn. Stat. § 515B.1-102 — applicability of MCIOA by community type and creation date ↩
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