West Virginia HOA Fining Authority

Section 1: Overview — Fining authority in West Virginia

West Virginia runs on one comprehensive statute. The West Virginia Common Interest Ownership Act — the WVCIOA, which the Legislature codified at Chapter 36B of the West Virginia Code — governs the condominiums, planned communities, and cooperatives created on or after July 1, 1986, and appeals climb a two-tier ladder: the Intermediate Court of Appeals of West Virginia, added effective July 1, 2022, hears civil cases first, and the Supreme Court of Appeals of West Virginia sits above it as the court of last resort.^1,2 The WVCIOA is West Virginia's own enactment of the Uniform Common Interest Ownership Act, and it supplies the operative fining rules for the large majority of the state's community associations.³ Condominiums created before July 1, 1986 may instead fall under the older Unit Property Act at Chapter 36A — but two key WVCIOA provisions, the fining power and the assessment lien, still reach those pre-1986 communities for events that occur after the WVCIOA took effect.^4,5 The operative limit is straightforward: an association may levy reasonable fines for violations of the declaration, bylaws, and rules, but only after it gives notice and an opportunity to be heard.⁶ For any board or manager, one downstream question carries the most weight — can an unpaid fine become a lien and support foreclosure? In West Virginia it can, because the statute folds fines directly into the assessment lien, a mechanic the Quick-Reference table below and Section 3C examine in detail.⁷ Associations organized as nonprofit corporations also answer to the West Virginia Nonprofit Corporation Act at Chapter 31E, and because West Virginia keeps no dedicated HOA regulator, the courts — not an agency — resolve fine disputes.⁸ The Quick-Reference table that follows breaks the mechanics down parameter by parameter.

Section 2: Quick-Reference Fining Mechanics Table

This table lays out West Virginia's fining mechanics at a glance. Both columns track the West Virginia Common Interest Ownership Act (Chapter 36B), which covers condominiums and planned communities alike and hands each the same fining power, the same procedural predicate, and the same lien treatment. Section 3 sources every value below, and the controlling Chapter 36B section number for each parameter appears there in a footnote. Where the statute fixes no number, the table says so plainly rather than implying a figure the Legislature never enacted.

Both columns reflect the West Virginia Common Interest Ownership Act (Chapter 36B); pre-July-1986 condominiums may be governed by the Unit Property Act (Chapter 36A), as Section 3 explains. Civil appeals run through the Intermediate Court of Appeals to the Supreme Court of Appeals of West Virginia. Last verified: July 14, 2026.

Section 3: Fining mechanics in detail

3A. Source and outer limits of fining authority

West Virginia's fining power is statutory and specific. Under W. Va. Code § 36B-3-102(a)(11), a unit owners' association may “[i]mpose charges for late payment of assessments and, after notice and an opportunity to be heard, levy reasonable fines for violations of the declaration, bylaws, rules, and regulations of the association.”⁶ Because the WVCIOA defines a common interest community to take in both condominiums and planned communities, this single grant supplies the fining authority for both forms — which is exactly why the two columns of the Section 2 table read the same.³ West Virginia adopted the Uniform Common Interest Ownership Act, but the operative citation is always the state's own Chapter 36B section number, not the UCIOA model number.

Two outer limits govern. First, the fine has to answer a violation of the declaration, bylaws, or rules, so the association needs an underlying rule the owner actually broke. Second, the fine has to be “reasonable.” The WVCIOA sets no dollar cap and no statutory ceiling on cumulative fines; reasonableness is the only quantitative standard, and courts measure it case by case.⁶ The declaration and bylaws fill in the rest — the fine schedule, the cure periods, the hearing procedure — all of which the statute leaves to the community to define.

For condominiums created before July 1, 1986, the older Unit Property Act (Chapter 36A) is the starting point, and it grants no express power to fine. Its enforcement provision, W. Va. Code § 36A-3-5, authorizes an action for damages or injunctive relief when an owner doesn't comply — not an administrative fine.⁹ So a pre-1986 condominium's fining authority rests on its declaration and code of regulations, unless the WVCIOA reaches it. It generally does: W. Va. Code § 36B-1-204 applies both § 36B-3-102(a)(11) and the § 36B-3-116 lien to common interest communities created before the chapter took effect, but only as to events and circumstances that occur after that date.⁴ The practical upshot is that most West Virginia associations, old and new, draw their fining authority from the same statutory source.

3B. The required fining procedure

The statutory predicate is compact, but it's mandatory. Section 36B-3-102(a)(11) permits a fine only “after notice and an opportunity to be heard.”⁶ The WVCIOA doesn't fix a minimum notice period, a cure window, a deadline to request or schedule a hearing, or a requirement of a written decision, which is why the Section 2 table marks each of those parameters “Not specified by statute; set by declaration.” Boards should treat the declaration and bylaws as the source of the concrete timeline and follow that timeline to the letter, because the validity of a West Virginia fine turns on compliance with the notice-and-hearing requirement. Skip it, and a fine imposed without notice and an opportunity to be heard is open to challenge — and, if the process was bypassed altogether, likely unenforceable.

The statute is also silent on per-day or continuing fines. It neither authorizes nor forbids them, which means a continuing daily fine has to rest on the declaration or rules and still clear the overall reasonableness bar; an accumulating per-day fine that grows out of proportion to the violation invites a reasonableness attack. Published fine schedules are, likewise, not required by statute — but they're strongly advisable, because a pre-adopted schedule makes the “reasonable” standard easier to defend and puts owners on notice.

For pre-1986 condominiums governed only by Chapter 36A, the procedure comes from the declaration and code of regulations, backed by the common-law expectation that an owner gets reasonable notice and a chance to respond before a penalty lands.¹⁰ And wherever the WVCIOA reaches a pre-1986 community under § 36B-1-204, the § 36B-3-102(a)(11) notice-and-hearing predicate governs fines for post-1986 events.⁴

Enforcement and challenges run through the courts, not an agency, because West Virginia has no administrative body that adjudicates HOA fine disputes.⁸ An owner contesting a fine, or an association suing to collect one, litigates in the Circuit Court. For final civil orders entered after June 30, 2022, the appeal runs to the Intermediate Court of Appeals of West Virginia and then, by discretionary petition, to the Supreme Court of Appeals of West Virginia.²

3C. Enforcement of unpaid fines: assessments, liens, and foreclosure

This is the highest-value and highest-risk mechanic, and West Virginia's statute resolves it cleanly in the association's favor. W. Va. Code § 36B-3-116(a) provides that “[t]he association has a lien on a unit for any assessment levied against that unit or fines imposed against its unit owner from the time the assessment or fine becomes due,” and it adds that, “[u]nless the declaration otherwise provides, fees, charges, late charges, fines and interest charged pursuant to section 3-102(a)(10), (11) and (12) are enforceable as assessments under this section.”⁷ Fines are therefore both collectible as assessments and securable by the association's statutory lien, and a fine-only balance can support the same lien and foreclosure remedy as an unpaid assessment — unless the declaration pulls fines out of the lien.

The priority terms demand care, and this is where boards most often overreach. The § 36B-3-116 lien is generally prior to other encumbrances, but § 36B-3-116(b) gives the association only a limited six-month priority over a prior recorded first security interest — and that six-month window is expressly measured by “the common expense assessments based on the periodic budget adopted by the association pursuant to section 3-115(a) which would have become due in the absence of acceleration during the six months immediately preceding institution of an action to enforce the lien.”⁷ That super-priority is tied to budget-based common expense assessments. Fines are secured by the lien and can be foreclosed, but a fine is not a budget-based common expense assessment — so a fine never enjoys the six-month priority over a prior first mortgage. Against a first mortgagee, the fine portion of the lien stands subordinate.

Two more limits matter in practice. Under § 36B-3-116(d), the lien is extinguished unless the association institutes enforcement proceedings within three years after the full amount becomes due — so a stale fine lien simply dies.⁷ Under § 36B-3-116(f), the prevailing party in a lien action recovers costs and reasonable attorney fees, a two-edged provision that rewards a clean case and punishes a defective one.⁷ The recent Justice Holdings litigation over Glade Springs Village — a gated resort planned community near Beckley in Raleigh County — shows the stakes. The Supreme Court of Appeals has held that the community is governed by the WVCIOA and has repeatedly demanded that assessment liens be created and enforced in strict compliance with the Act, vacating a $6,073,692.18 assessment judgment and, in a May 22, 2026 decision, directing the circuit court to produce a properly detailed foreclosure order before any sale.^11,12

For pre-1986 condominiums under Chapter 36A, the enforcement path looks different. Chapter 36A lets the council enforce a charge assessed against a unit by civil action, with the judgment enforceable as otherwise provided by law, but it creates no express fine-inclusive lien of the kind § 36B-3-116 supplies.¹³ Where § 36B-1-204 reaches a pre-1986 community, § 36B-3-116 provides the lien and its fine treatment for post-1986 events.⁴

Finally, suspension — of voting rights, or of common-element and amenity use — is not listed among the powers in § 36B-3-102, so the WVCIOA doesn't itself authorize suspension as a fining tool.¹⁴ Any such remedy has to be grounded in the declaration or bylaws, which is why the Section 2 table marks suspension “Not specified by statute; set by declaration.”

Section 4: Recent legislative and judicial activity

A. Recent bills

No bill enacted — or seriously advanced — in the 2024, 2025, or 2026 Regular Sessions of the West Virginia Legislature touched the WVCIOA's fining power (§ 36B-3-102(a)(11)), its notice-and-hearing predicate, or the assessment-and-fine lien (§ 36B-3-116). The official statutory bill history shows that the Legislature last amended § 36B-3-102 through Senate Bill 376 in the 2011 Regular Session — a change that added the power to sue an owner to collect overdue dues or assessments and left the fining and due-process language alone — and that § 36B-3-116 has not been amended since the chapter's 1986 enactment.^15,16 Lawmakers introduced several Chapter 36B-adjacent bills in 2024 and 2025, including the 2024 Senate Bill 188, which created a Mountain Homes Fund loan-guarantee program at new Code §§ 5B-2P-1 through 5B-2P-13, along with discriminatory-covenant measures — but none amended the fining, due-process, or lien provisions, and each died in the legislative process.¹⁷ Because no qualifying enacted bill exists in the past 24 months, this subsection carries no metadata block and no audience-implication table; the accurate result is that the fining, due-process, and lien framework stands unchanged.

B. Recent rulings

C. Active legislative debates

No active, publicly identified proposal in the 2026 session would amend the WVCIOA's fining, due-process, or lien provisions. Proposals to update or narrow how Chapter 36B applies have surfaced from time to time in recent sessions — including a 2023 measure that would have limited the Act's reach — but none touching fining authority has advanced.¹⁷

Section 5: National positioning and related coverage

West Virginia sits squarely inside the UCIOA family, alongside states like Nevada, Vermont, Colorado, and Connecticut, and it uses its own Chapter 36B section numbers rather than the UCIOA model numbers. That sets it apart from the CC&R-primary states, where fining authority and lien treatment lean chiefly on private governing documents instead of a uniform statute. The defining feature, for compliance purposes, is that the WVCIOA covers condominiums and planned communities under one framework — so the fining power, the notice-and-hearing predicate, and the fine-inclusive assessment lien apply identically to both forms. The recently redrawn court structure shapes how fine disputes get reviewed, too: since July 1, 2022, civil appeals no longer head straight to the top but run through the Intermediate Court of Appeals of West Virginia before reaching the Supreme Court of Appeals of West Virginia, the court of last resort, which now takes up most fine and lien disputes only by discretionary petition.

HOA Weekly updates this West Virginia coverage quarterly as the Legislature and the West Virginia appellate courts act. Federal frameworks apply here too, whatever the state framework says — notably the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act, which can reach third-party collection of fines, along with the Fair Housing Act, the Americans with Disabilities Act, the Servicemembers Civil Relief Act, and the FCC's OTARD rule. A fuller treatment of each will follow once that section is built.

1. W. Va. Code § 36B-1-204, Applicability to preexisting common interest communities (Chapter 36B, Uniform Common Interest Ownership Act; July 1, 1986 effective date) ↩
2. W. Va. Code § 51-11-3, West Virginia Intermediate Court of Appeals; court created; operable on or before July 1, 2022 ↩
3. W. Va. Code Chapter 36B, Uniform Common Interest Ownership Act (short title and applicability to condominiums, planned communities, and cooperatives) ↩
4. W. Va. Code § 36B-1-204 (applying §§ 3-102(a)(1)–(6) and (11)–(16) and 3-116 to communities created before the chapter's effective date, only as to events after that date) ↩
5. W. Va. Code § 36A-1-1, Unit Property Act, short title (Chapter 36A, Condominiums and Unit Property) ↩
6. W. Va. Code § 36B-3-102(a)(11), Powers of unit owners' association (levy of reasonable fines after notice and an opportunity to be heard) ↩
7. W. Va. Code § 36B-3-116, Lien for assessments (subsections (a) fines enforceable as assessments; (b) six-month limited priority tied to budget-based common expense assessments; (d) three-year limitation; (f) costs and attorney fees to prevailing party) ↩
8. W. Va. Code Chapter 30, Article 40, West Virginia Real Estate License Act (broker licensing; no dedicated community-association manager license and no HOA fine-dispute adjudicatory agency) ↩
9. W. Va. Code § 36A-3-5, Remedy for noncompliance with code of regulations (action for damages or injunctive relief; no express fining power) ↩
10. W. Va. Code § 36A-3-1, Administration governed by code of regulations (Chapter 36A administrative provisions) ↩
11. Justice Holdings LLC v. Glade Springs Village Property Owners Ass'n, Inc., 250 W. Va. 563, 906 S.E.2d 216 (2023) (holding Glade Springs Village is governed by the UCIOA; vacating the $6,073,692.18 assessment judgment for insufficient findings) ↩
12. State ex rel. Justice Holdings, LLC v. Hon. Todd A. Kirby, No. 25-401 (W. Va. Sup. Ct. App., decided May 22, 2026) (petition for writ; foreclosure of statutory assessment liens; Supreme Court of Appeals docket materials, courtswv.gov) ↩
13. W. Va. Code § 36A-7-3, Method of enforcing charges (Unit Property Act; civil action by council; judgment enforceable as otherwise provided by law) ↩
14. W. Va. Code § 36B-3-102 (enumerated powers of the association; suspension of voting or amenity rights not enumerated) ↩
15. 2011 Regular Session Senate Bill 376 (last amendment to § 36B-3-102; added collection-litigation power now codified at (a)(17)), West Virginia Legislature Bill Status ↩
16. W. Va. Code § 36B-3-116, official Bill History (last enacted 1986 Regular Session Senate Bill 102; no amendment since the chapter's 1986 enactment) ↩
17. West Virginia Legislature Bill Status database (2024–2026 Regular Sessions; 2024 SB 188 Mountain Homes Act at new §§ 5B-2P-1 through 5B-2P-13 and other Chapter 36B-adjacent bills that did not amend § 36B-3-102 or § 36B-3-116) ↩