Can an HOA foreclose on an active-duty servicemember over unpaid dues?
Reviewed by the OurHOA team · Updated July 2026
How the Servicemembers Civil Relief Act caps HOA interest, blocks default judgments, and forces foreclosure into court when an owner is on active duty.
The short answer
An association is not barred from collecting from someone in uniform, but federal law changes almost every step of how it has to do it. The Servicemembers Civil Relief Act, codified at 50 U.S.C. sections 3901 through 4043, caps the interest an association can charge, forces a court to be involved before a home is sold, and requires the association to tell the court in writing whether the person it is suing is in the military. Boards that treat a deployed owner like any other delinquent account are the ones that end up with a void judgment, a reversed foreclosure, and a legal bill that dwarfs the dues they were chasing. None of this is legal advice, and an association that has a servicemember in collections should be talking to its attorney rather than working from a checklist.
Who the law actually protects
The SCRA covers active-duty members of the Army, Navy, Air Force, Marine Corps, and Coast Guard, along with National Guard and Reserve members called to federal active duty for more than 30 consecutive days. Protection starts the day active duty begins and generally runs until release, with several protections extending for a defined period afterward. A few things it is not: it is not a general veterans' benefit, so someone who separated five years ago has no claim to it, and it is not triggered by a weekend drill. It also does not care whether the owner is deployed overseas or stationed 20 minutes away, because the trigger is active-duty status and not distance from home.
The six percent cap on interest and fees
While a servicemember is on active duty, a creditor cannot charge more than six percent per year on an obligation incurred before service began, and the difference is forgiven rather than deferred to the back end. This reaches HOAs directly: if the owner bought the home before entering active duty, interest on their delinquent assessments is capped. The detail boards miss is that the statute defines interest broadly to include service charges, renewal charges, and fees, which is why aggressive late fee stacking on a covered account is a real exposure and not a technicality. The servicemember has to ask, in writing, with a copy of the orders attached, and can do so at any point during active duty and up to 180 days after release, at which point the cap applies back to the first day of service. One limit worth being straight about: the cap turns on the obligation predating service, so an owner who bought the home while already on active duty is generally outside it.
Foreclosure has to go through a judge
Under 50 U.S.C. section 3953, a pre-service obligation secured by an interest in the servicemember's real property cannot be enforced through a nonjudicial sale during active duty or for 12 months afterward without a court order or a valid written waiver. In practice that means the trustee sale process many states allow for assessment liens is off the table, and the association has to go to court instead. A knowing violation is a criminal offense punishable by a fine, up to a year of imprisonment, or both, which is a sentence worth reading twice before anyone posts a sale notice. There is genuine legal debate about how far this reaches an HOA assessment lien, since the statute speaks in terms of a mortgage, trust deed, or other security in the nature of a mortgage, and a lien arising from recorded covenants is not identical to a mortgage. Courts have not settled it uniformly. The conservative course, and the one most association attorneys recommend, is to assume it applies and take the judicial route.
The affidavit nobody remembers to file
This is where associations get caught most often, and it has nothing to do with foreclosure. Before a court can enter a default judgment against someone who has not appeared, the plaintiff has to file an affidavit stating whether the defendant is in military service, is not, or that the plaintiff could not determine it. If it looks like the defendant may be serving, the court has to appoint an attorney before entering judgment, and the court can order a stay of at least 90 days on request. A default judgment obtained without that affidavit is vulnerable: a servicemember who was materially affected by their service and has a meritorious defense can move to reopen it after they return. Say your association sued an owner who was mid-deployment, got a quick default in month two, recorded a lien, and started collecting. Fourteen months later the judgment is set aside and the association is back at the start, minus the legal fees and any goodwill it had left in the neighborhood.
What a board should actually do
Verify before you escalate. The Defense Manpower Data Center runs a free public SCRA verification service where anyone can check military status by name and date of birth or Social Security number, and it returns a dated certificate. Run it before you turn an account over to collections, before you file suit, and again before any sale, then save the certificate in the file. Write it into your collection policy so it happens whether or not the current treasurer remembers, and train whoever handles delinquencies to treat an APO address, a sudden change in payment pattern, or an owner mentioning orders as a reason to stop and check. On the owner's side, the moves that help most are unglamorous: send the association written notice with a copy of your orders rather than assuming it knows, set up automatic payment before you go, update your address of record so notices reach you, and give someone a power of attorney who can respond to a violation letter in your absence. A community that keeps clean owner records, current contact information, and a documented collection process handles this well, and keeping that record straight is a good part of what OurHOA does for small self-managed boards. See also our guides on the HOA fining process and due process, hoa collections and attorney fees, and how to update your HOA contact or address of record.
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These guides are general education for HOA boards and residents, not legal, tax, or financial advice. Rules vary by state and by your community's governing documents - check with a professional for your situation.