Why this reaches far beyond one country club

The structure at issue — an association obliged to collect for an amenity owned by someone else — is not unusual in North Carolina, and it is the exact fault line running through the state's most-covered HOA disputes.

Union County homeowners in one subdivision were billed a monthly amenities fee plus a claimed initiation fee for a pool, clubhouse and tennis courts owned by the builder and located a mile outside the neighbourhood; the builder later offered an opt-out after press coverage. A Catawba County community saw dues rise steeply with the developer also serving as association president and a promised pool never built. In each, the legal question underneath the grievance is the one Myers answers: can the declaration make an owner fund a third party's asset?

On this authority, in North Carolina, yes — where the declaration says so. The qualifier is the whole of the owner's protection, and it is a drafting question decided long before anyone bought a house.

What it changes for owners, boards and buyers

For owners: non-use is not a defence, where the declaration makes the obligation absolute and independent of use. Nor is the fact that the money leaves the association. And because the covenant runs with the land, it binds successors regardless of what they understood at closing.

For boards: an association in this position has less discretion than owners often assume. Where the declaration obliges collection and a separate agreement obliges remittance, a board that stops collecting is not exercising judgment on behalf of members — it is breaching the instrument it administers, and exposing the association to the third party. This decision makes that position harder to argue, not easier.

For buyers and closing attorneys: this is the practical takeaway. An estoppel or resale statement showing a regular assessment does not reveal whether part of it is a pass-through to a developer for an off-site amenity, whether the obligation is absolute, or whether the amenity can be closed without affecting the charge. Those answers are in the declaration and in any referenced amenity agreement, and Myers is the reason to read them rather than the ledger.

The limits of the decision

Two, and both matter.

First, it is declaration-specific. The court's reasoning runs through what this 1999 instrument says: that the deeds conveyed subject to it, that it authorises the assessment, that the obligation is absolute and use-independent. A community whose declaration lacks an express amenity-dues obligation is not covered by this holding, and the general Chapter 47F assessment power is not a substitute for one.

Second, review has been sought. Owners' counsel filed a motion to reconsider on the day of decision, which was denied, and has petitioned the North Carolina Supreme Court for discretionary review. No disposition of that petition appears in the Supreme Court's published filings through today.² Until the Supreme Court acts, Myers is binding Court of Appeals authority — but it is authority with a petition pending against it, and anyone relying on it for a long-horizon decision should know that.

The legislative counterpoint

It is worth setting this decision beside what the General Assembly did and did not do in the same period.

Senate Bill 378, which passed the Senate 47–0 in May 2025, would have capped managing-agent contract terms and barred fine-contingent manager compensation, but it contained nothing addressing developer amenity pass-throughs. Neither did House Bill 444, nor Senate Bill 1047. The reform agenda in North Carolina has concentrated on fines, foreclosure and records; the structural question of who an association may be required to collect for has not been on the legislative table at all.

What to watch next

The Supreme Court's disposition of the discretionary-review petition. A grant would put the question of third-party amenity dues before the state's highest court for the first time; a denial leaves Myers as the controlling statement of North Carolina law on it.

Also worth tracking: whether the 2027 long session produces any disclosure requirement for amenity pass-throughs at resale. That is the narrow, cheap fix available to a legislature that has repeatedly failed to pass broad reform, and nothing prevents it being proposed.