Maine · Law guide

Maine HOA law guide.

Every Maine statute that governs community associations, hosted in full on HOPB with the official text. Maine has no homeowners association act — no planned community act, no common interest ownership act — and that single fact reorganises everything. If you own a condominium unit you have a statute, and the 1 January 1983 line decides which one. If you own a house in a covenanted subdivision you do not, and what you have instead is your declaration, the corporation statute, and three short laws that override private documents on specific subjects. This index is how the pieces fit together, and which one answers your question.

8 statutes Full text on-site Current through 2025 · source generated 20 Oct 2025
Which statute governs you

First question: is it a condominium? If not, Maine has no statute for you.

Maine is one of the states where the honest summary is that there is no homeowners association act. No planned community act, no common interest ownership act. That was verified three ways rather than assumed: Title 33's complete chapter list runs ch. 1 to ch. 45 with nothing of the kind; Title 30-A — the only other place it could live — is counties, municipalities and plantations, and its “Subdivisions” subchapter is municipal permitting, not association governance; and a phrase search across all twelve held Titles finds “declaration of covenants” nowhere. So everything turns on whether you own a condominium unit. If you do, one of the two statutes below is yours and the 1 January 1983 line decides which. If you own a house in a covenanted subdivision, neither applies — your rights come from your declaration, from the corporation statute if your association is incorporated, and — realistically — from one override statute, the Solar Rights chapter. The other three override statutes are written for condominiums or for real estate held in undivided common interests.

01 Maine Condominium Act33 M.R.S. ch. 31, seventy-five sections in four Articles, 33 M.R.S. §§ 1601-101 to 1604-118, effective 1 January 1983 (§ 1601-116). Creation and the declaration, association powers, meetings, voting, assessments, the lien, records and purchaser protection. Read § 1601-104 before anything else, because it inverts what most owners expect: “[e]xcept as expressly provided in this Act, provisions of this Act may not be varied by agreement, and rights conferred by this Act may not be waived.” The Act is mandatory unless it says otherwise — so when you are told your documents override something here, the thing to look for is the clause in that section permitting it. What it gives you: an annual meeting with 10 to 60 days' notice stating the agenda, a right to attend board meetings subject to reasonable rules the board sets, with executive session limited to five listed purposes and no final vote in session (§ 1603-108); a 20% quorum default that the bylaws may raise, or lower but never below 10% (§ 1603-109); proxies that die at 11 months (§ 1603-110); fines only after notice and an opportunity to be heard and only if reasonable (§ 1603-102(a)(11)); interest on past-due assessments capped at 18% a year (§ 1603-115(b)); and an eleven-category records right with eight grounds to withhold (§ 1603-118). Two things to get right about the lien. It covers assessments and fines, and recording the declaration is itself notice and perfection so nothing appears in the registry to warn you — but Maine is not a super-lien state: § 1603-116(b) puts a first mortgage ahead of it whether recorded before or after the assessment fell delinquent. Six years to enforce, prevailing-party costs and fees, and a binding payoff statement within 10 business days. 02 Maine Unit Ownership Act33 M.R.S. ch. 10, thirty-four sections, §§ 560 to 589-C, enacted 1965. The statute for condominiums created before 1 January 1983 that never amended their instruments to come under the modern Act. Do not look for the 1983 date in this Act — it is not there. Section 562, its own application provision, says only that the chapter applies to property whose owners “submit the same to the provisions of this chapter by duly executing and recording a declaration”. No date appears in it. The cut-off is drawn by § 1601-102(b) of the other Act — which contains no date either; the date is in § 1601-116, “This Act shall be effective on January 1, 1983.” And both Acts can cover the same old condominium. § 1601-102(a) reaches eleven sections of the Condominium Act plus its definitions back to every Maine condominium however old — including the lien (§ 1603-116), the records right (§ 1603-118) and the resale certificate (§ 1604-108) — while nothing repeals this chapter's own § 577 or § 581 for those properties. The reach-back has two limits in its own words: those sections apply “only with respect to events and circumstances occurring after the effective date”, and they do not invalidate provisions of declarations, bylaws, floor plans, surveys or duly adopted rules that already existed on 1 January 1983. Beyond that, which governs a given dispute is a question for a Maine lawyer. Its own provisions are thinner. § 577's records right is receipts, expenditures and vouchers, available “at convenient hours of weekdays” — no minutes, no contracts, no owner list, no copying right. § 581's lien may be claimed 60 days after the due date — a ripening period, not a deadline — and perfected by filing in the registry of deeds and serving the owner, ranks behind tax liens and “all sums unpaid on mortgages of record”, and a foreclosure purchaser is not liable for the earlier unpaid shares, which become common expenses of everyone. And this is where Maine put its newest right. § 576-A, effective 1 January 2026, voids declaration and bylaw provisions prohibiting or unreasonably restricting an electric vehicle charging station in a unit or limited common element parking space, with a 60-day deemed approval and a prevailing-party fee award. It sits inside §§ 560 to 587, the range § 1601-102(b) switches off for post-1983 condominiums — so on the statutes as they stand, the older Act has charging rights and the modern one has none.
The entity behind it

Compulsory for a condominium, and for everyone else it may be the whole rulebook

Section 1603-101 of the Condominium Act is blunt: the association “shall be organized as a nonprofit corporation under Title 13-B”, with no exception for small or informal communities, and it must exist before the declarant conveys any unit. The Unit Ownership Act imposes no such requirement, so an older association may or may not be incorporated. For a non-condominium association this is the statute that matters most, because with no HOA act above the declaration, Title 13-B is very nearly the entire statutory source of an owner's right to a meeting, to notice, to a vote, to remove a director and to see the books. If your subdivision association is not incorporated, you do not get any of it — which is worth checking on the Secretary of State's corporate search before anything else.

03 Maine Nonprofit Corporation Act13-B M.R.S., one hundred and thirty-nine sections across chapters 1 to 14 (there is no chapter 5). Formation, members, meetings, voting, directors and officers, conflicts of interest, records, dissolution and the annual report. The records right is the centrepiece, and unlike some states the bylaws cannot switch it off. § 715 carries no variation clause, and § 601 permits bylaws only to contain provisions “not inconsistent with law or the articles of incorporation”. Any officer, director or voting member may inspect the books “for any proper purpose at any reasonable time” on five business days' written notice — and on refusal the Superior Court may order inspection at the corporation's expense and shall award your costs and reasonable attorney's fees unless the corporation proves it refused in good faith because it had a reasonable basis for doubt about the right to inspect. Three limits: a voting member's only proper purpose is fulfilling duties conferred by the articles, bylaws or law; the corporation may charge reasonable copying costs; and it may impose reasonable restrictions on the use or distribution of the records. One default surprises almost everyone. § 601 vests the power to alter, amend or repeal the bylaws in the board of directors unless the articles or bylaws say otherwise. Three rules are genuinely mandatory: cumulative voting is prohibited and any provision permitting it “shall be void” (§ 604(3)); no loans to directors or officers, with personal liability on anyone who assents (§ 712); and removal of a director may never be set below a majority of those voting (§ 704(2)) — the default being two thirds, with or without cause, at a special meeting called expressly for it. Everything else is a default, so check what displaces it: a special meeting may be called by one twentieth of the votes absent a provision (§ 602(3)); notice runs 10 to 50 days unless the articles or bylaws provide otherwise (§ 603(1)); one member one vote unless the articles limit, enlarge or deny it (§ 604(1)); quorum is one tenth in the absence of a bylaw (§ 605(1)).
What a board cannot do to you

One general statute, and three narrow ones that override your documents

Maine gives a non-condominium owner no statutory right to open meetings, a ratified budget or a cap on fines — because there is no statute granting one. Records and meeting notice are different: if the association is incorporated, Title 13-B supplies both (§ 715 and § 603(1)), which is why the corporation statute does so much work in Maine. What it gives every owner is fair housing law, and four short statutes that tell private governing documents what they may not say — though three of the four are written for condominiums. Note what is not on that list: Maine's housing reforms (PL 2021, c. 672, as amended in 2025), which require municipalities to allow additional dwelling units and accessory dwelling units, each carry a subsection expressly preserving private covenants that impose greater restrictions (30-A M.R.S. § 4364-A(8), § 4364-B(11)). They bind your town, not your declaration.

04 Maine Human Rights Act5 M.R.S. ch. 337, sixty-one sections; subchapter 4 (§§ 4581 to 4583) is fair housing. It reaches an “owner, lessee, sublessee, managing agent or other person having the right to sell or rent or manage a housing accommodation”, so a rule, a fine or an architectural refusal can all be the conduct complained of. The protected list is longer than most summaries give. Race or color, sex, sexual orientation or gender identity, physical or mental disability, religion, ancestry, national origin, familial status, and having sought and received an order of protection. Gender identity and protection-order status are both easy to miss and both are in every list in § 4581 and § 4581-A(1) to (3). Receipt of public assistance is protected by a different provision with a narrower reach — § 4581-A(4) covers only a person furnishing rental premises or public accommodations who refuses to rent or imposes different terms “primarily because of” that status. Familial status covers more than children: § 4553(5-A) also reaches adults who cannot meet essential requirements for their own health, safety or self-care, and extends to anyone pregnant or in the process of securing custody. Disability duties are separated at § 4582-A: modifications at your expense, reasonable accommodations in rules and policies, and assistance animals — whose use “may not be conditioned on the payment of a fee or security deposit”, subject to defenses of direct threat to the health or safety of others, substantial physical damage to the property of others, and substantial interference with others' reasonable enjoyment of the housing. Procedure trap: § 4622 bars fees and damages unless you went to the Commission first — but that limitation expressly does not apply to housing claims covered by the federal Fair Housing Act, which most association disputes will be. 05 Solar Easements & Solar Rights33 M.R.S. ch. 28 (§§ 1401–1402) and ch. 28-A (§§ 1421–1424). Chapter 28 makes a solar easement a recorded, appurtenant real property interest that runs with the land. Chapter 28-A is the one that limits your documents, and it expressly reaches “[r]ules, bylaws or regulations of an association of property owners, including but not limited to a homeowners association, unit owners association or condominium owners association”. Three limits decide most real disputes and summaries drop all three. § 1423(1): the section applies only to a legal instrument adopted or created after 30 September 2009 — many Maine declarations are older, though a rule made after that date is itself a legal instrument. § 1423(3): an instrument may prohibit devices outright on property in common ownership with third parties or on common elements of a condominium, which is usually the roof. And § 1423(2) is asymmetric — an owner gets a solar collector or a clothes line, a renter gets only the clothes line. The famous qualifier belongs to one ground only. § 1423(4) allows restrictions necessary to protect public health and safety, buildings from damage, historic or aesthetic values “when an alternative of reasonably comparable cost and convenience is available”, or shorelands. Only the third carries that clause — and it is the ground an association is most likely to invoke. 06 Low-impact landscaping protection33 M.R.S. ch. 28-B, a single section — § 1451, added 2023. A restriction “may not put an unreasonable limitation on low-impact landscaping”, and “restriction” is defined to include a covenant or condition in a deed, declaration, contract, bylaw, rule or other instrument, so a board cannot escape it by choosing which document to use. An unreasonable limitation expressly includes one that requires cultivated vegetation to consist “in whole or in part” of turf grass. Unlike the solar law it carries no cut-off date. But read the coverage definitions before relying on it. It applies to a “condominium” or to “real estate subject to common ownership”, and both require the common portion to be held as undivided interests by the owners of the separate portions. A conventional subdivision whose common land is owned by the association as a nonprofit corporation does not match that on its face. Whether yours is inside or outside is a question about your deed and declaration. Four further limits: it protects only a portion that is both “not subject to common ownership” and one you have the right to exclusive use of — which on its face excludes a limited common element, since § 1601-103(16) defines that as a portion of the common elements; it applies only while you maintain and regularly tend the planting; § 1451(3) preserves reasonable design and aesthetic guidelines as to the type, number and location of features; and the same subsection says the section “does not apply to a restriction on historic property” listed in or eligible for the National Register.
Everything that is somewhere else

The road, the collector, and the statutes written for other purposes

In a state with no HOA act, the scattering is the law. Three more pages carry the provisions that decide common arguments but live in Titles written for something else — the private road most subdivisions actually depend on, the statute that governs whoever is chasing you for money, and a capstone for everything that fits nowhere.

07 Private roads & road associations23 M.R.S. ch. 305, subch. 2 (§§ 3101–3106) and subch. 2-A (§ 3121). For an owner outside a condominium this is the closest thing Maine has to an association statute: meetings called by warrant through a notary public, voting, a sworn commissioner or board, a fair and equitable cost formula set by the bylaws or by vote, assessments, recorded stormwater easements, liability insurance, volunteer immunity, and the association's own name to sue in. It needs four or more parcels benefited, and the owners of any three or more of those parcels — as long as at least three of the parcels are owned by different people — may start it. Two numbers decide real disputes. § 3102 caps the apportioned cost of repairs at 1% of an individual owner's municipal property valuation in any calendar year — measured against the town's valuation of your property, not against the cost of the work. And § 3104 changed the debt on 30 June 2018: money owed no longer runs with the land on a transfer unless a notice of claim was recorded before it. Also worth knowing: “repairs and maintenance” excludes paving, with three exceptions — new pavement where none exists, if three quarters of the owners of all benefited parcels approve at a meeting called under § 3101(2); limited paving shown to be a cost-effective fix for an erosion problem; and repair or maintenance of pavement that has existed for at least eight years, which needs no vote at all. There is a notice-to-cure before any claim is recorded or complaint served; and where there is no association and no agreement, § 3121 makes each residential owner share equally where the private road is the primary means of access to the benefited property — but subsection (4) makes any covenant, declaration or association control over the statute, so it is a gap-filler, not a floor. 08 Maine Fair Debt Collection Practices Act32 M.R.S. ch. 109-A, thirty-two sections. An association collecting its own assessments in its own name is generally outside it — § 11002 defines a debt collector by two prongs — principal purpose, or regularly collecting debts “owed or due or asserted to be owed or due another” — and § 11003(1) excludes an officer or employee of a creditor collecting in the creditor's name. Three things change that: using a name that is not the association's and suggests a third party is collecting, which § 11002 puts back in expressly; instructing a collection agency; and regularly enforcing security interests, defined as more than five times in the previous calendar year. Attorneys are in, and the Legislature settled it in 1993. § 11002 includes an attorney whose principal activities include collecting debts, a Maine-licensed one being “subject exclusively to subchapter 2” — which is where the validation duty and the small-claims bar live. The old exclusion at § 11003(6) was repealed by PL 1993, c. 126, whose § 1 is what wrote attorneys into § 11002; only its catchline survives in the printed section. Where it applies it bites hard: a written validation notice within five days, a 30-day dispute window that stops collection until verification is mailed, no settlement agreement unless reduced to writing with a copy to you in 10 business days — and until it arrives no payment is due — contact only between 8 a.m. and 9 p.m., and § 11021, which bars a debt collector from bringing a collection action in small claims court at all. Remedies run to actual damages, up to $1,000 more, and costs and fees. 09 Related & miscellaneous Maine statutesThe provisions that fit nowhere else, each read in full before it was written up. Maine's headline housing laws expressly do not override your covenants (30-A M.R.S. § 4364-A(8), § 4364-B(11)) — the most commonly believed wrong thing about Maine property law right now. Covenants here are durable: twenty years to sue on a breach of a covenant in a deed (14 M.R.S. § 817, for instruments executed on or after 7 October 1967), and no marketable title act in Title 33 cutting old restrictions off. Private transfer fees are void going forward, but § 163(1)(A)(7) carves out association assessments and fines by name, so long as they are for maintenance, improvements, services or expenses relating to property owned, used or enjoyed in common by the members. A condominium may require a six-month assessment escrow of anyone who buys a unit after 1 October 2009, held beyond the reach of its own creditors, with the account number disclosable on request and interest payable (§ 1603-115-A). The small claims limit rose from $6,000 to $10,000 on 1 January 2026, actions involving title to real estate are excluded, and shaving a claim to fit makes the judgment res judicata as to the full amount. The Unfair Trade Practices Act requires a 30-day written demand before an action for damages — not for a counterclaim or cross claim — and makes fees mandatory on a finding of violation. And Maine's seller disclosure statute obliges a seller to name a road association where access is by something other than a public way, and only if the seller knows — but carries no duty to disclose HOA membership at all.

General information, not legal advice. Statutory references are to the Maine Revised Statutes as published by the Maine State Legislature, including enactments through 2025, from the official Title text generated 20 October 2025; the statutes are amended every session, so confirm the current text against the official source.

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