"Everything starts with the fence"... how my simple ACC request led to lawsuits against my HOA Board and the Town
Hey everyone, I need to vent. We moved into a brand new home in 2023 after 1.5 years of waiting for the build. In December 2024, my wife and I just wanted to build a solid wood privacy fence on our corner lot. But when I went to the HOA portal, it forced you to agree to a 4 or 5-foot wrought iron fence.
So, I looked at the fence rules, and because of that, I had to pull the governing documents. Because I pulled those documents, I started seeing other documents.
What did I find at the bottom of the rabbit hole?
• A Board that was amending our Declarations without any votes in Sept 2024
• Bylaws that magically slashed the quorum requirements from two-thirds down to 25%, then 10%, and then just 5%
• A developer that had control of the board for 16 years—way past what the governing CC&Rs allowed
• The homeowner “transition” happened just after the falsified documents, and those homeowners who made it on the board without proper quorum/votes refuse to reset and do it correctly (power hungry)
So we filed a lawsuit against the HOA in September, because we had to…
• An additional item in the falsified documents was a 1-year statute of limitations setting to challenge any governing documents (What the actual F\*?)
**But wait, it gets better.** Remember the fence that started all of this? The HOA actually approved our fence last May! But an ACC member didn't like that we got approval, threw a fit, and started a petition. They got nearly every neighbor around me to sign it and dragged the Town into the mess. So now, our fence is sitting in a second legal battle with the Town.
The court system and lawyers move like molasses. We couldn’t even get an ex parte TRO, and the court just ignores us while we're stuck fighting on two fronts.
Has anyone else pulled a single thread on an HOA rule and accidentally uncovered a massive, multi-year mess?
Tell me I'm not the only one who turned into an amateur legal investigator just to get some backyard privacy.
HOA size (just under 1000 single family homes)
Texas