Montana broadened who can sue to enforce a covenant
Montana broadened who can sue to enforce a covenant
2026-09-15 · Montana · Legislation
What happened. Since October 1, 2025, an individual Montana owner no longer needs the board's cooperation to enforce a covenant. The statute now says who may sue, and the list is three items long.
The new standing list
House Bill 325, “Revise covenant laws,” introduced by Rep. S. Fitzpatrick, became Chapter 258, Laws of 2025. Signed May 1, 2025, effective October 1, 2025. It rewrote the opening subsections of Mont. Code Ann. § 70-17-210 so that an action may be brought by:1
“(a) a party to an agreement containing real property covenants, conditions, or restrictions or the party's successors in interest; (b) the owner of an interest in real property burdened or benefited by a covenant, condition, or restriction; or (c) a homeowners' association or other governing body of a real property development…”
The bill also replaced “parcel owner” and “parcel” with “owner of an interest in real property” and “property” throughout, and extended the venue for recording a notice of abandonment to “the county where the property is situated.”
What stayed
The fifteen-year dormancy bar in subsection (3)(a) survives, as do its six exceptions in (3)(b): compliance with federal, state or local law; an easement or right-of-way; maintenance of infrastructure; a court order or governmental approval; utility installation, maintenance or removal; and nuisance abatement. One of those was re-worded — the infrastructure carve-out now reads “for the maintenance of infrastructure or improvements serving the real properties burdened or benefited by the covenants,” where it previously said “in the development.”
The board is no longer the gatekeeper
This is the operational change, and it cuts both ways.
An owner who wants a covenant enforced — against a neighbour's shed, an unapproved paint colour, a parked trailer — now has express statutory standing as “the owner of an interest in real property burdened or benefited by” that covenant. A board that has weighed the cost, the optics or the merits and decided not to act can be bypassed. So can a board that simply does not have the money to litigate.
For a manager fielding “the association won't do anything about it” complaints, the honest answer changed on October 1, 2025. It is no longer that the association is the only one who can bring the claim.
What a board is likely to see more of
- Neighbour-versus-neighbour suits on association covenants, with the association not a party but its documents squarely at issue — and its enforcement history in evidence.
- Requests for records to build such a suit. Montana has no statutory records-access right for association members; what an owner can get still depends on the declaration, the bylaws, and Title 35 chapter 2 nonprofit law.
- Pressure on the two-year enforcement record. HB 147, effective five months earlier, defines “enforcement action” as consistent enforcement on all subject properties over at least two years. A private enforcement suit runs into the same abandonment defence the association would — and its success or failure will be read as a ruling on the covenant.
The reading trap this bill created
HB 325 and HB 147 amended the same section in the same session with different effective dates — October 1 and May 5, 2025 respectively. The code commissioner merged the two sets of changes, and the merged text is what governs now. A Montana association working from a copy of § 70-17-210 printed before October 2025 is working from a superseded statute, and the error is invisible: the section number did not change.2
Worth a check of the actual documents a board relies on — the covenant-enforcement policy, the violation letter template, any legal summary in the owner handbook.
What it does not change
HB 325 did not create a records right, a notice requirement, a fee-shifting rule, or any new limit on what a covenant may say. It answered a narrow question — who may sue — and answered it broadly.3
Related Montana HOA Topics
- House Bill 325 (2025), enrolled bill with strike-and-insert text — Chapter 258, Laws of 2025 (Montana Legislature document store) ↩
- Mont. Code Ann. § 70-17-210 — merged current text and history note (Montana Code Annotated, official) ↩
- Montana Legislature session-law effective-date record for HB 325 — all sections effective October 1, 2025 ↩
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