The driveway opinion

Advisory Opinion 2026-10 (Monarch Meadows Owners' Association v. King, March 20, 2026) went to the other end of the same subject: whether an association can cap how many vehicles an owner parks on their own driveway, or how many are visible from the street. The office's conclusion:²

“The Association cannot limit the number of cars Mr. King parks in his driveway simply based on the number of garage bays he has. Unless the Association is specifically targeting statutorily restricted vehicle types or requiring him to fill his large garage first, its attempt to limit his driveway parking violates Utah law.”

The carve-out is the interesting half. Utah's rule limits at § 57-8a-218 permit restrictions aimed at particular categories of vehicle, and the opinion reached for the statutory definitions to identify them — commercial vehicles under § 72-9-102, motor homes and RV trailers under § 13-20-2, and the vehicle definitions at § 41-1a-102. An ordinary passenger car is in none of those categories.

The opinion also carries a footnote flagging that the S.B. 122 amendments effective May 6, 2026 “could change the conclusions” — an unusually candid acknowledgement that the office was reading a section the legislature had just rewritten but which had not yet taken effect.

Why a public street is different

An association's jurisdiction is geographic before it is anything else. It runs to the lots and common areas the declaration submits to it. A dedicated public street inside a subdivision is neither: it belongs to the municipality, which regulates parking on it under its own ordinances. The Steeplechase opinion routed the underlying conduct complaint to Draper City, which is where a public-street parking dispute is actually decided.

The distinction is easy to lose because the street looks like part of the community and the declaration often mentions it. Private roads are a genuinely different case, and the 2026 reinvestment-fee legislation gestures at why — an association that maintains a private road system is providing capital-intensive infrastructure maintenance, and is not a “low-amenity association” for fee-cap purposes.

The fine that went with it

The Steeplechase owner had also been fined without a warning. Utah's fining procedure at § 57-8a-208(2)(a) requires a written warning before any fine, describing the violation, naming the provision violated, stating that fines may follow, and — for a continuing violation — setting “a time that is not less than 48 hours…by which the lot owner shall cure the violation.” Subsections (4) and (5) then supply a 30-day window to request an informal hearing and 180 days to bring a civil action.

Where the underlying restriction is void, the procedural question never arises: there is nothing to warn about. Our Utah fining authority page sets out the sequence and the difference between the community-association and condominium fining sections, including the condominium chapter's $500 monthly aggregate cap that has no planned-community equivalent.

Where an association's vehicle rules still hold

Nothing in either opinion touches a garage-use requirement, a restriction on commercial vehicles, a restriction on recreational vehicles and trailers, or parking in common areas the association actually owns. Those are inside the boundary. What is outside it is a headcount of ordinary cars on an owner's own driveway, and anything at all on a street the city owns. Our Utah architectural review page covers the rule-adoption procedure that governs how such restrictions get made and unmade.

What to watch next

Both opinions read the pre-May-2026 text. S.B. 122 rewrote § 57-8a-212 to add a list of subjects a declaration may not reach, including driveway parking of an operable vehicle. The direction of the statute and the direction of the opinions point the same way, which makes a reversal on these facts unlikely — but the reasoning will be differently anchored the next time the question comes up.