The clock to challenge an HOA assessment in South Carolina runs from the day it passed, not the day you were billed
The clock to challenge an HOA assessment in South Carolina runs from the day it passed, not the day you were billed
2026-09-19 · South Carolina · Courts
South Carolina's recording statute for association documents was used this year against homeowners rather than against an association — to start the limitations clock running earlier than the owners expected.1
Unpublished Opinion No. 2026-UP-339 was submitted June 1 and filed July 1, 2026, affirming summary judgment for the association under Rule 220(b). It carries the Rule 268(d)(2), SCACR banner and has no precedential value.
What was challenged
Five Richland County homeowners sought declarations that an assignment of deed restrictions was invalid, that an amendment to the deed restrictions was invalid, and that the association lacked authority to impose a fee assessment.
All three challenges failed on the same ground: the three-year statute of limitations in Section 15-3-530(1).
The accrual dates
On the assignment and the amendment, the court held the owners "were on notice of these underlying documents for more than three years" before they filed.
On the assessment, the court fixed accrual by citing Section 27-30-130(B)(1)(a), which provides that association rules, regulations and amendments to regulations are "effective upon passage or adoption." The assessment passed on November 27, 2018. Three years ran to November 27, 2021. The complaint was filed March 4, 2022 — late.
The arguments that did not get heard
The owners argued an equitable action carries no limitations period, and that the documents were intended as sealed instruments carrying a twenty-year period. Both were unpreserved. The challenge to the association's lien authority was also unpreserved, for want of a Rule 59(e) motion.
Why the statutory citation is the notable part
Section 27-30-130 is ordinarily discussed as an obligation on associations: governing documents must be recorded in the county register of deeds to be enforceable, and rules and regulations must be recorded by January tenth of the year following adoption to remain enforceable.
Here subsection (B)(1)(a) did different work. Its statement that rules and regulations are "effective upon passage or adoption" supplied the moment at which a homeowner's cause of action accrued. The same statute that conditions enforceability on recording also starts the clock at adoption — an earlier date than recording, and considerably earlier than the first bill.
This is, on the court sweep of every South Carolina appellate opinion filed between January 2025 and September 2026, the only decision citing Section 27-30-130 at all — and it is not about the recording requirement.
What follows at category level
- Three years is the window to attack an assessment, an amendment, or an assignment of covenants, under Section 15-3-530(1).
- For a rule or assessment, it runs from adoption, not from the first invoice and not from the first enforcement attempt.
- Notice of recorded documents is charged against the owner. The court treated the owners as on notice of the assignment and amendment well before they sued.
- Preservation decides more of these cases than the merits. Three separate arguments here were lost for want of preservation, including one that needed a Rule 59(e) motion.
The unresolved question the case left open
Because the lien-authority challenge was unpreserved, whether that association had authority to impose the lien was not decided. Across the whole 2025-2026 window there is no South Carolina appellate decision squarely adjudicating an association's power to foreclose an assessment lien.
The nearest holdings are indirect. Oak Forest Homeowners Association v. Dennison confirms that covenants requiring payment of association fees run with the land, and notes in a footnote that an action to foreclose an assessment lien is an action in equity.
So a South Carolina association's foreclosure power continues to rest on its recorded declaration rather than on a statute granting it, and three separate bills that would have restricted it — H. 3447, S. 366 and H. 5204 — all died this term. See collections and liens and assessment limits.
A practical asymmetry worth naming
An association's failure to record leaves a document unenforceable indefinitely — the defect can be raised whenever the association tries to enforce. A homeowner's challenge to a validly adopted assessment expires in three years from adoption.
Those two timelines are not symmetrical, and they follow from the same statute.
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