Montana HOA Fining Authority

Section 1: Overview — Fining authority in Montana

Montana takes a narrower path than most states. One statute, the Unit Ownership Act, covers condominiums — and nothing on the books covers planned-community homeowners' associations at all. Fining authority in both settings traces back to the CC&Rs, not a statute, and Montana adds one more quirk: no intermediate appellate court stands between the trial-level District Courts and the Montana Supreme Court.

The Montana Unit Ownership Act, Mont. Code Ann. § 70-23-101 et seq., governs condominiums submitted to it.¹ Lawmakers passed it in 1965, long before the Uniform Common Interest Ownership Act existed, and it grants no express power to fine. Planned communities get even less: Montana has no dedicated statute for them at all. Their fining authority comes straight from the recorded declaration and bylaws, while the Montana Nonprofit Corporation Act, Mont. Code Ann. § 35-2-113 et seq., supplies the corporate formalities for the many associations organized as nonprofit corporations.² Because the fine's authority is contractual, the real limits are whatever the declaration says, backed by the common-law expectation that a fine stay reasonable and follow reasonable notice and a chance to respond.³

The question that matters most downstream: can an unpaid fine become a recorded lien and support foreclosure? For condominiums, the Act's lien secures "common expenses" — a defined term that doesn't plainly reach fines. For planned communities, a lien right exists only if the declaration creates one.⁴ The Quick-Reference table below works through that analysis, and Section 3C develops it further.

Section 2: Quick-Reference Fining Mechanics Table

Here's Montana's fining picture at a glance. Fining authority runs largely through the CC&Rs in both community types, so many cells point to the declaration and bylaws rather than a statute — and several cells that would carry a statutory value in a UCIOA state read "CC&R-derived; no statute" or "Set by declaration" here instead. Section 3 sources every value in the detailed discussion below. The Condominiums column reflects the Unit Ownership Act; the Planned Communities column reflects the contractual and nonprofit-corporation framework that governs associations with no dedicated statute of their own.

The Condominiums column reflects the Montana Unit Ownership Act (Mont. Code Ann. § 70-23-101 et seq.); the Planned Communities column is CC&R-derived. Appeals go directly to the Montana Supreme Court — Montana has no intermediate appellate court. Last verified: July 14, 2026.

Section 3: Fining mechanics in detail

3A. Source and outer limits of fining authority

The Montana Unit Ownership Act grants a condominium association no express power to levy monetary fines. Lawmakers enacted the Act in 1965, and its one part addressing sanctions, Part 10 ("Enforcement and Penalty"), didn't survive: the legislature repealed it in 1999, marking Mont. Code Ann. §§ 70-23-1001 and 70-23-1002 "Repealed. Sec. 3, Ch. 12, L. 1999" and leaving the chapter with no penalty mechanism at all.⁵ The Act's compliance provision, Mont. Code Ann. § 70-23-506, requires each unit owner to comply with the bylaws, the rules adopted under them, and the covenants, conditions, and restrictions in the declaration — and it makes a failure to comply "grounds for an action maintainable by the association of unit owners or by an aggrieved unit owner."⁶ So the statutory remedy for a violation runs through a court action, not a fine. The Act's bylaws provision, Mont. Code Ann. § 70-23-308, requires bylaws to address matters like "the manner of collecting from the unit owners their share of the common expenses," but it authorizes no fines or penalties.⁷ Whatever power a condominium association has to fine, it has to come from the declaration and bylaws — not the statute.

Planned communities stand on the same contractual footing, minus even a background statute. Montana has no planned-community act, no general HOA act, nothing.² The Montana Nonprofit Corporation Act supplies corporate formalities for associations that incorporate as nonprofits, but it confers no substantive fining power. A planned community's fining authority exists only if the recorded declaration and bylaws create it.

Montana has never adopted UCIOA, so operators shouldn't assume any UCIOA fining template applies here — no notice-and-hearing script, no budget-ratification default, no six-month super-priority lien. The outer limit on any fine is contractual and common-law: the fine has to fall within the authority the declaration actually grants, and Montana courts construe restrictive covenants strictly, resolving ambiguities in favor of the free use of property.³ Montana sets no statutory dollar cap on association fines; the practical ceiling is the reasonableness standard courts apply to covenant enforcement, plus whatever dollar terms the declaration itself sets.

3B. The required fining procedure

Neither track carries a statutory fining procedure. The Unit Ownership Act imposes no notice period, no hearing requirement, and no written-decision requirement as a predicate to a fine — it doesn't address fines at all. Planned communities fare the same: no statute prescribes a fining procedure there either. In both settings, the enforceable procedure is whatever the declaration and bylaws require, backed by the common-law expectation that an association give reasonable notice and a chance to respond before it imposes a penalty. There's no general statutory notice period or hearing deadline to borrow from; the governing documents set the timeline.

One statutory overlay does apply — to associations organized as nonprofit corporations, which covers most Montana associations.² Mont. Code Ann. § 35-2-520 bars a public benefit or mutual benefit corporation from expelling or suspending a member, or terminating or suspending membership, "except pursuant to a procedure that is fair and reasonable and is carried out in good faith."⁸ The statute offers a safe harbor: a procedure counts as fair and reasonable when the articles or bylaws provide "not less than 15 days' prior written notice of the expulsion, suspension, or termination and the reasons for it; and (ii) an opportunity for the member to be heard, orally or in writing, not less than 5 days before the effective date" — or, alternatively, when "it takes into consideration all relevant facts and circumstances."⁸ That provision governs suspension or termination of membership rights, so it bears on penalties that suspend a member's voting or amenity rights, not on a pure monetary fine. Even so, it's the closest thing Montana has to a statutory due-process floor. A member challenging an expulsion, suspension, or termination has to bring the proceeding within one year of its effective date.⁸

Whether the declaration permits per-day or continuing fines depends entirely on its own text. The practical takeaway: a Montana fine's enforceability turns on the declaration's text, on reasonable notice, and on a genuine opportunity to be heard. Owners litigate a challenge in the District Court, Montana's court of general jurisdiction, and any appeal goes directly to the Montana Supreme Court — Montana has no intermediate appellate court to stop at first.

3C. Enforcement of unpaid fines: assessments, liens, and foreclosure

This is the area where it's easiest to over-read the statute. For condominiums, the Unit Ownership Act does create an association lien — but a targeted one. Under Mont. Code Ann. § 70-23-607, once the association, acting through its manager, furnishes a unit "any services, labor, or material lawfully chargeable as common expenses," the association "shall have a lien upon the individual unit and the undivided interest in the common elements appertaining to such unit for the reasonable value of such common expenses, and the lien shall be prior to all other liens or encumbrances upon the unit except" tax and assessment liens and a first mortgage or trust indenture of record.⁹ "Common expenses" carries a defined meaning under Mont. Code Ann. § 70-23-102(4): expenses of administration, maintenance, repair, or replacement of common elements; expenses the owners agree to treat as common; and expenses the statute, declaration, or bylaws declare common.¹⁰ A monetary fine for a rule violation isn't "services, labor, or material," and it doesn't naturally fall within "common expenses" either — so the statutory lien doesn't secure fines. The priority carve-out also means Montana grants association liens no super-priority; a recorded first mortgage always outranks the association. To claim the lien, the association has to record a verified claim in the county, stating the account due, the owner, and a description of the unit.⁹

Mont. Code Ann. § 70-23-608 governs foreclosure of that lien. It directs that proceedings "conform as nearly as possible to the proceedings to foreclose liens created by Title 71, chapter 3, part 5" — the construction-lien procedures — and it permits "an action to recover a money judgment for unpaid common expenses" without foreclosing or waiving the lien.¹¹ Because the lien secures common expenses, not fines, a fine-only balance falls outside the statutory foreclosure right. An association that wants to secure or foreclose on unpaid fines has to rely on lien language in its own declaration — and even then, Montana's strict construction of covenants makes the declaration's precise wording decisive.

Planned communities get no statutory lien at all. Lien and foreclosure rights exist only if the declaration expressly creates them, and their scope stops at whatever the declaration provides. Suspension of voting rights or amenity use works the same way — a creature of the declaration — and for an incorporated association, suspending membership rights also triggers the fair-and-reasonable-procedure requirement of § 35-2-520.⁸ Treat any claim that a fine can be foreclosed as a declaration-specific question, not a statutory entitlement.

Section 4: Recent legislative and judicial activity

4A. Recent bills

Montana's Legislature meets in regular session only in odd-numbered years, so the 2025 regular session — the 69th Legislature — is the most recent one on the books.¹² No 2025 bill touched the Unit Ownership Act's fining, due-process, assessment, or lien provisions, and none created a general HOA statute. Two vehicles that would have expanded owner protections against covenant enforcement, Senate Bill 431 and House Bill 761, both died without enactment.¹³ One measure did become law, and it's worth flagging here because covenant enforcement is the mechanism through which an association ultimately pursues a fine in court.

4B. Recent rulings

No Montana Supreme Court decision in the past 36 months has squarely addressed whether an association fine is enforceable, or how a lien or foreclosure treats one. The relevant recent decisions turn on covenant interpretation and enforcement generally, not fines specifically, and Montana's foundational covenant-construction cases predate the 36-month window and serve as background authority in Section 3A instead.³

4C. Active legislative debates

Interest in HOA regulation keeps resurfacing across recent sessions, yet it hasn't produced a general HOA statute, and repeated covenant-reform bills keep failing — so don't expect a statutory fining or due-process regime anytime soon.¹³ Any future change is far more likely to refine covenant-enforcement mechanics under Title 70, chapter 17, than to create a fining code from scratch.

Section 5: National positioning and related coverage

Montana sits toward the light-touch end of the national spectrum on fining authority. It's a condominium-statute-only state with nothing governing planned communities, so fining power in both settings runs largely through the CC&Rs. That sets Montana apart from full UCIOA states like Alaska, Colorado, Connecticut, and Minnesota, which supply statutory fining and lien templates, and apart from California, which regulates associations through a single detailed statute. The practical consequence: a Montana operator has to read the individual declaration and bylaws to find out whether the declaration authorizes a fine, how much, and through what process — no statutory default to fall back on. Montana's court structure shapes appellate review, too. With no intermediate appellate court, once a District Court decides a fine dispute, the appeal goes straight to the Montana Supreme Court, which makes that Court the single source of binding covenant-enforcement precedent.

HOA Weekly updates this coverage quarterly as the Legislature and the Montana Supreme Court act. Federal law applies here too, regardless of what Montana's own framework says — notably the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act, which can reach third-party collection of fines, along with the Fair Housing Act, the Americans with Disabilities Act, the Servicemembers Civil Relief Act, and the rules governing satellite dishes and antennas.

1. Mont. Code Ann. § 70-23-101 (Short title, "Unit Ownership Act"), MCA; chapter table of contents, Title 70, ch. 23 ↩
2. Montana Nonprofit Corporation Act, Mont. Code Ann. Title 35, ch. 2 (§ 35-2-113 et seq.); Montana Legislative Local Government Interim Committee, "HOA Governance in Montana" (2024) (Montana has no single HOA act; most associations organize under Title 35, ch. 2) ↩
3. Windemere Homeowners Ass'n, Inc. v. McCue, 1999 MT 292, 297 Mont. 77, 990 P.2d 769 (restrictive covenants strictly construed; ambiguities resolved in favor of free use of property; covenants not extended by implication or enlarged by construction); see also Town & Country Estates Ass'n v. Slater, 227 Mont. 489, 740 P.2d 668 (1987) ↩
4. Mont. Code Ann. § 70-23-607 (lien for "common expenses"), MCA; § 70-23-102(4) (definition of "common expenses") ↩
5. Mont. Code Ann. Title 70, ch. 23, Part 10 ("Enforcement and Penalty (Repealed)"); §§ 70-23-1001 and 70-23-1002, "Repealed. Sec. 3, Ch. 12, L. 1999" ↩
6. Mont. Code Ann. § 70-23-506 (compliance with bylaws, rules, and covenants required; failure to comply is grounds for an action maintainable by the association or an aggrieved unit owner) ↩
7. Mont. Code Ann. § 70-23-308 (contents of bylaws, including "the manner of collecting from the unit owners their share of the common expenses") ↩
8. Mont. Code Ann. § 35-2-520 (Termination, expulsion, and suspension; fair-and-reasonable-procedure safe harbor of 15 days' prior written notice and an opportunity to be heard not less than 5 days before the effective date; one-year limitation to challenge) ↩
9. Mont. Code Ann. § 70-23-607 (Claim for common expenses -- priority of lien -- contents -- recording; lien prior to all other liens except tax/assessment liens and a recorded first mortgage or trust indenture; verified claim must be recorded) ↩
10. Mont. Code Ann. § 70-23-102(4) (definition of "common expenses") ↩
11. Mont. Code Ann. § 70-23-608 (Foreclosure of lien under claim for common expenses -- action without foreclosure; proceedings conform to Title 71, ch. 3, part 5) ↩
12. Montana Legislature ("The Legislature meets in regular session for up to 90 working days of every odd-numbered year") ↩
13. Montana 69th Legislature (2025): SB 431 and HB 761 (covenant/HOA restriction bills) not enacted; related SB 400 "Died in Standing Committee" (2025-05-23); see Montana Legislature Bill Explorer, bills.legmt.gov ↩
14. Mont. Code Ann. § 70-17-210 (Covenant enforcement and abandonment), "amd. Sec. 1, Ch. 258, L. 2025; amd. Sec. 1, Ch. 423, L. 2025"; HB 325 and HB 147 (2025) enrolled texts ↩
15. Clover Meadows Homeowners Ass'n, Inc. v. Spear, 2024 MT 102N, DA 23-0334 (Mont. May 14, 2024) (memorandum opinion; noncitable and not precedent under the Court's Internal Operating Rules) ↩