Why a dissolved association is a genuine problem

This is not a paperwork inconvenience. An administratively dissolved nonprofit corporation has real difficulty doing the four things an association exists to do:

• Enforcing covenants. Section 70-17-210, as amended in 2025, lists among those who may bring an enforcement action “a homeowners' association or other governing body of a real property development.” An association whose corporate existence has lapsed is in a poor position to be that party — though note that the same 2025 amendment gave individual burdened or benefited owners express standing, so enforcement does not stop entirely.
• Collecting assessments and recording liens. The lien is the association's; the association has to exist to assert it.
• Holding title. Common area, open space and amenity parcels are usually titled in the association. Montana's 2025 House Bill 233, Chapter 187, actually created a process for an HOA to acquire legal title to certain open spaces — a process that presupposes a live entity.³
• Insuring itself. A master policy names an insured. Directors' and officers' coverage names an entity.

And it is all avoidable for the cost of one filing that currently costs nothing.

Three checks worth doing this month

• Confirm your entity's status with the Secretary of State. An association that has changed treasurers or managers in the last three years is the likeliest to have a gap, because the notice went to whoever was on file.
• Confirm your registered agent. This is where the notice goes. A registered agent who has moved, resigned or died is how an association stops hearing from the state without knowing it.
• Put April 15 on the calendar as a recurring item, not a task someone remembers. December 1 is the cliff; April 15 is the date.

There is a specific reason to do this now rather than at renewal. A fee waiver is exactly the kind of announcement that gets internalised as “nothing is due” — and the state has now said it four years running, which is long enough for the filing habit to lapse in an association where nobody is tracking it.

What else did and did not change in Montana nonprofit law

Nothing did. Title 35, chapter 2 — the Montana Nonprofit Corporation Act, the law most Montana associations are actually governed by — was not amended in 2025 in any respect reaching associations. Section 35-2-906, on corporate records, carries a history note ending in 1993.

That is worth sitting with, because it is the answer to a question boards often ask. Montana has no statutory records-inspection right for association members and no statutory meeting, election or financial-reporting duty. Where the declaration and bylaws are silent, Title 35 chapter 2 is the fallback, and it is a 1993-vintage fallback written for nonprofits generally.

We also found no administrative dissolution sweep aimed at HOAs or nonprofits and no 2025 or 2026 Secretary of State rule change specific to nonprofit corporation filing requirements beyond the fee waivers.

Sourcing caution on the numbers

We read the Secretary of State's own releases. We could not open any Montana Administrative Register notice or the underlying administrative rule text — the state's rules portal returns a JavaScript shell and rejects direct requests. So the notice numbers and the rule number for the waivers are unverified and we do not print them. The commonly cited $10 nonprofit annual report fee, the $15 late fee and the November 1 foreign-entity date appear only in third-party guides and are likewise unverified. The dates that matter — April 15 to file and December 1 before dissolution — come from the Secretary of State and from § 35-6-102.²