Montana HOA Records Inspection

Section 1 — Overview: How records inspection works in Montana

Montana handles association records two different ways, and the route you take depends on the kind of community you live in. For condominiums, the state imposes only a narrow records duty under the traditional Unit Ownership Act (Mont. Code Ann. § 70-23-101 et seq.). For planned communities, it offers no comprehensive HOA statute at all — those owners fall back on the Montana Nonprofit Corporation Act and their own recorded covenants. And when a dispute reaches the appellate stage, it goes straight to the Montana Supreme Court, because the state runs no intermediate appellate court.¹ On the condominium side, § 70-23-606 carries the duty: it directs the manager to keep detailed, accurate records of the receipts and expenditures that affect the common elements, and to make those records available for unit owners to examine.² On the planned-community side, the right runs through the Nonprofit Corporation Act — chiefly § 35-2-906 for corporate records, § 35-2-907 for inspection by members, § 35-2-908 for the scope of that right, and § 35-2-909 for court-ordered inspection.³

For condominiums, the law sets an availability standard rather than a counted clock. Section 70-23-606 asks the manager to keep the records open for examination at the manager’s place of business during convenient weekday hours, and it names no deadline.² Planned-community inspection rests on corporate law and the recorded declaration, not on any HOA-specific statute.⁴ Because Montana operates a single-tier appellate system, an owner files a records dispute in District Court, and any appeal heads directly to the Montana Supreme Court.¹ Step back to the national map, and Montana sits among the reasonableness-and-availability states rather than the hard-clock states such as Florida, where an association must produce official records within 10 business days of a written request.⁵ The table and the sections that follow lay out the mechanics for each regime.

Section 2 — Quick-Reference: Montana HOA Records Inspection

Section 3 — The records-inspection framework in detail

3A. Records subject to inspection

Montana splits records rights by community type. For a condominium that has recorded a declaration under the Unit Ownership Act, § 70-23-606 is the single records provision. It requires the manager to keep detailed, accurate records, in chronological order, of the receipts and expenditures affecting the common elements; to itemize maintenance and repair expenses and any other expenses the association incurs; and to make those records, plus the vouchers authorizing payments and the receipts for payments, available for examination.² The reach is financial. The statute speaks to receipts, expenditures, and vouchers — not to a broad catalog of governing documents, contracts, or reserve studies. When a condominium owner wants records beyond the common-element financial records, the right depends on the declaration, the bylaws, or, if the association is incorporated, the Nonprofit Corporation Act.⁴

Planned communities get no comprehensive HOA statute and no HOA-specific records statute.⁴ Because most of these associations organize as nonprofit corporations, the inspectable categories come from the Montana Nonprofit Corporation Act. Section 35-2-906(5) directs the corporation to keep at its principal office its articles, its bylaws, the board resolutions defining member rights, minutes of member meetings and member actions for the past 3 years, financial statements for the past 3 years, a list of current directors and officers, and its most recent annual report.⁹ Section 35-2-907(2) adds, for qualifying members, accounting records and the membership list.⁷ Section 35-2-911 separately entitles any member, on written request, to the corporation’s most recent financial statements, which must show in reasonable detail its assets, liabilities, and results of operations.¹¹ The recorded covenants can grant broader or more specific access, and because Montana courts treat covenants as binding contracts, a records right written into the declaration stands on its own terms. No Montana statute supplies a general planned-community records right outside the corporate framework and the covenants.⁴

3B. The request-and-response sequence

Standing differs by regime. Under the Unit Ownership Act, unit owners may examine the common-element financial records; the statute sets no written-demand requirement and no proper-purpose test. The owner inspects at the manager’s place of business during convenient weekday hours.² The Act prescribes no response deadline, no copy-fee cap, and no production timeline. The standard is availability, not a counted clock, so the manager satisfies the statute by keeping the records open to examination during ordinary weekday hours.

For an incorporated planned community, the Nonprofit Corporation Act drives the sequence. A member must give written notice or a written demand at least 5 business days before the date the member wants to inspect and copy.⁷ For the § 35-2-906(5) category — articles, bylaws, minutes, financial statements, and the like — the member needs no proper purpose. For accounting records and the membership list under § 35-2-907(2), three conditions attach: the member must make the demand in good faith and for a proper purpose, must describe that purpose and the records with reasonable particularity, and must show that the records connect directly to the purpose.⁷ Inspection then takes place at a reasonable time and location the corporation specifies. A member’s agent or attorney carries the same inspection and copying rights as the member.⁶ The corporation may impose a reasonable charge covering labor and material, and that charge may not exceed the estimated cost of production or reproduction.⁶ No per-page statutory cap applies; the limit is reasonableness tied to actual production cost. Contrast Florida, which caps copying at up to 25 cents per page on the association’s photocopier and personnel time at $20 per hour.¹²

3C. Withholding, confidentiality, and the membership or owner list

The Unit Ownership Act says nothing about exemptions; § 70-23-606 neither lists withholdable categories nor addresses privilege.² The Nonprofit Corporation Act likewise names no exemptions such as personnel files or pending-litigation materials. Two statutory limits do appear. First, § 35-2-907(5) lets the articles or bylaws of a religious corporation limit or abolish the inspection right — a provision that matters little to most homeowners’ associations.⁷ Second, the membership list carries specific protections under § 35-2-910: without board consent, no one may obtain or use a membership list for any purpose unrelated to a member’s interest as a member, may use it to solicit money or property except to solicit votes in a corporate election, may use it for any commercial purpose, or may sell or purchase it.¹⁰ The statute provides no individual opt-out; the protection runs against misuse rather than letting members remove their names. General Montana law and the rules of civil procedure — not the inspection sections — govern attorney-client privilege and the treatment of pending-litigation files. A board that asserts privilege does so under that general law, and § 35-2-909(4) lets a court impose reasonable restrictions on how a member uses or distributes records the court orders produced.⁸

3D. Remedies and enforcement for noncompliance

The two regimes diverge sharply on remedies. The Unit Ownership Act provides no records-specific remedy; a condominium owner who is denied examination relies on general civil remedies in District Court, such as an action for injunction or a writ of mandamus to compel the manager to make the records available.² The Act sets no statutory damages, no per-day penalty, and no fee-shifting tied to records.

The Nonprofit Corporation Act, by contrast, supplies a defined remedy. Under § 35-2-909, if the corporation refuses a compliant member access to the § 35-2-906(5) records, the District Court for the county of the corporation’s principal office may summarily order inspection and copying at the corporation’s expense. For other records, a member who meets the proper-purpose conditions may apply for an order, and the court must dispose of the application on an expedited basis. If the court orders inspection, it must also order the corporation to pay the member’s costs, including reasonable attorney fees, unless the corporation proves it refused in good faith because it had a reasonable basis to doubt the member’s right to the records. The court may impose reasonable restrictions on the member’s use of the records.⁸ The enforcement forum is the District Court, and any appeal proceeds directly to the Montana Supreme Court, because Montana has no intermediate appellate court.¹

Section 4 — Recent legislative and judicial activity

A. Recent bills

Montana came close to overhauling this entire framework in 2025, and then it did not. The one consequential move was a comprehensive bill that would have erased the condominium-versus-planned-community split — and it died before it reached the floor.

B. Recent rulings

For this window, there is nothing to report. A review of the Montana Supreme Court’s published opinions over the past 36 months turned up no decision interpreting § 70-23-606 or the Nonprofit Corporation Act inspection provisions (§§ 35-2-906 to 35-2-909) in a common-interest-community records dispute.¹⁶ The closest recent association cases concern restrictive-covenant interpretation, not records inspection: Clover Meadows Homeowners Ass’n v. Spear, 2024 MT 102N (a non-precedential memorandum opinion on the meaning of “single-family dwelling”), and Craig Tracts Homeowners’ Ass’n v. Brown Drake, LLC, 2020 MT 305, 402 Mont. 223, 477 P.3d 28 (holding that running a fishing lodge rented to short-term tenants did not violate a “residential purposes only” covenant). Because neither one addresses records inspection, no audience-implication table follows.¹⁷

C. Active legislative debates

The fight is not over; it has simply moved to study. House Joint Resolution 50 (2025) directs an interim study of the Uniform Common Interest Ownership Act, including how it would square with the Nonprofit Corporation Act and the Unit Ownership Act — which, the resolution notes, “has not been thoroughly amended since its adoption in 1965” — and it sends the final results to the 70th Legislature. Any comprehensive records-inspection framework for Montana planned communities would most likely come out of that study and a future bill, not current law.¹⁵

Section 5 — National positioning and related coverage

Montana is a covenant-primary, split-regime state. Condominium records inspection rests on a thin, traditional Unit Ownership Act availability standard that reaches only the common-element financial records and sets no deadline, while planned-community records inspection runs through corporate law — the Montana Nonprofit Corporation Act — plus the recorded covenants. There is no comprehensive HOA records statute. That places Montana well apart from hard-clock comprehensive states such as Florida, whose Homeowners’ Association Act requires an association to make official records available within 10 business days of a written request and imposes statutory damages of $50 per calendar day, up to $500, for a willful failure, along with fixed copy-fee caps.^5,12 Montana’s appellate structure stays single-tier: no intermediate appellate court sits between the trial bench and the top, so appeals from the District Courts go directly to the Montana Supreme Court.¹ Momentum toward a comprehensive Montana planned-community statute exists, but it has not produced law — the 2025 Uniform Common Interest Ownership Act bill died in committee, and the topic now belongs to interim study.¹⁵

HOA Weekly refreshes its Montana records-inspection coverage each quarter, as the Legislature and the Montana courts act. Federal frameworks — the Fair Housing Act, the Americans with Disabilities Act, the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act, the Servicemembers Civil Relief Act, and the OTARD rule — apply to Montana associations no matter what the state framework says.

Footnotes

1. Montana Judicial Branch, “About Us” (the Montana Supreme Court hears direct appeals from all District Courts; Montana has no intermediate appellate court) ↩
2. Mont. Code Ann. § 70-23-606, Records of receipts and expenditures affecting common elements — inspection (MCA, leg.mt.gov) ↩
3. Mont. Code Ann. Title 35, ch. 2, part 9, Annual Report — Corporate Records (§§ 35-2-906 to 35-2-911) (MCA, leg.mt.gov) ↩
4. Mont. Code Ann. § 35-2-525, Homeowners association — remote meetings (defining “homeowners’ association” as a corporation organized under Title 35, ch. 2; reflecting that planned communities operate under corporate law and covenants) ↩
5. Fla. Stat. § 720.303(5) (2024) (official records must be made available “within 10 business days after receipt by the board or its designee of a written request”; willful failure creates a rebuttable presumption of noncompliance, with statutory damages of “$50 per calendar day, up to $500”) ↩
6. Mont. Code Ann. § 35-2-908, Scope of inspection rights (agent/attorney parity; right to copies; reasonable charge for labor and material not exceeding estimated cost of production or reproduction) (MCA, leg.mt.gov) ↩
7. Mont. Code Ann. § 35-2-907, Inspection of records by members (5-business-day written notice/demand; proper-purpose conditions for accounting records and membership list; religious-corporation limitation) (MCA, leg.mt.gov) ↩
8. Mont. Code Ann. § 35-2-909, Court-ordered inspection (District Court summary order at corporation’s expense; expedited disposition; mandatory award of member’s costs and reasonable attorney fees absent good-faith refusal; court may impose use restrictions) (MCA, leg.mt.gov) ↩
9. Mont. Code Ann. § 35-2-906, Corporate records (permanent minutes; accounting records; member list; written-or-convertible form; records kept at principal office including articles, bylaws, 3 years of minutes and financial statements, director/officer list, latest annual report) (MCA, leg.mt.gov) ↩
10. Mont. Code Ann. § 35-2-910, Limitations on use of membership list (no use unrelated to membership, no commercial use, no sale or purchase, without board consent) (MCA, leg.mt.gov) ↩
11. Mont. Code Ann. § 35-2-911, Financial statements for members (most recent financial statements on written request) (MCA, leg.mt.gov) ↩
12. Fla. Stat. § 720.303(5)(g) (2024) (copying capped at “up to 25 cents per page” on the association’s photocopier; personnel costs at “$20 per hour,” chargeable only after one-half hour and not for requests of 25 or fewer pages) ↩
13. Montana HB 619 (2025 Regular Session), “Establish the uniform common interest ownership act,” introduced text (69th Legislature) ↩
14. Montana HB 619 (2025) action history: (H) Tabled in Committee — (H) Judiciary, Mar. 1, 2025; (H) Missed Deadline for General Bill Transmittal, Mar. 12, 2025 ↩
15. Montana HJ 50 (2025, 69th Legislature), enrolled resolution requesting an interim study of the Uniform Common Interest Ownership Act, with results reported to the 70th Legislature (recounting that the House Judiciary Committee “tabled House Bill No. 619 after committee members argued that the bill was too large and complex to understand after one hearing”) ↩
16. Montana Supreme Court Decisions index (review of published opinions; no decision located construing §§ 35-2-906 to 35-2-909 or § 70-23-606 in an HOA/condominium records dispute) ↩
17. Craig Tracts Homeowners’ Ass’n, Inc. v. Brown Drake, LLC, 2020 MT 305, 402 Mont. 223, 477 P.3d 28 (covenant interpretation; not a records-inspection case) ↩