HOAs are awful, but it’s even worse when the HOA ruins a friendship.

Sometimes it feels like it’s impossible to take on an HOA and win, but other times it’s worth fighting for what’s right.

In this story, one man and his girlfriend were renting a condo from their friends. The condo is part of an HOA, and the parking is in a parking garage that has a gate you have to go through in order to enter and exit.

The problem is that the gate crashed down onto the girlfriend’s car when the man who wrote the story was driving it, but the HOA is sticking the blame on the driver instead of taking responsibility for a faulty gate.

His friends are being charged to fix the gate, and they want him to reimburse them even though he didn’t do anything wrong.

He has tried to fight this situation in multiple ways, but now, their friendship is on the line. Is it better to just pay the money or fight for what’s right?

Let’s read the whole story to decide.

AITA for refusing to repay a friend for an HOA fine that I had no agency in fighting?

My girlfriend (25F) and I (26M) used to rent from and live with our friends of 7 years, Charlie (25M) and Beth (25F), in a condo that they owned.

The condo belonged to part of an HOA that managed the building and common areas.

Last October, an incident happened where the garage gate came down on top of my GF’s car’s back windshield as I was waiting for traffic to clear and exit the garage.

My friend Scott and I got out of the car to see what happened and, stressed out that it would break the back windshield or windshield wiper, I tried to push up on the gate to relieve the stress.

This would be scary!

The gate didn’t budge and we got back in the car, unsure what to do next.

Suddenly, the gate released on its own and went back up, so since we were concerned it would come back down on top, we got back in the car and drove away.

Relieved that my GF’s car had no damage, I didn’t think the gate had been damaged at all and didn’t tell anyone.

However, a week later Beth received an email from the HOA saying that her tenant (me) had damaged the gate due to making an illegal left turn out of the exit and we would need to pay for the repairs ($4k in total). The building manager showed us the video of the incident (only half the car was visible and it was from rather far away), but refused to send it to us.

He was not going to simply accept their side of the story.

Immediately, I wanted to fight this as I believed it was their faulty gate that failed to detect whether my car had cleared the path, but my friends wanted to stay in the good graces of the HOA because they plan to live there for a long time and want to be involved in the community.

The HOA agreed to have a hearing regarding the incident and would schedule it to hear me out.

Months went by as they didn’t give us any updates until mid-February, 3 months after we moved out, when they notified us that the hearing would take place February 28.

Here’s how the hearing went…

Although I already had a flight booked that day, I took the meeting from the airport and tried my best to “kill them with kindness”, starting by complimenting their community and explaining that I appreciate all they do for it.

After that, I recounted the incident exactly how I described above and explained that it was actually not illegal in my state to cross double-solid lines when exiting a private driveway. I explained that I believe the gate’s sensors were insufficient to detect when a vehicle had properly cleared the gate’s path and this could actually be a hazard if there is no failsafe mechanism to release the gate when it encounters resistance.

Finally, I admitted that I could have handled the situation better by calling their building maintenance to report the incident, but truly did not think the gate was damaged before receiving their email.

I answered a couple questions (“Did you actually see the gate come back down?” -No, “Did the gate get caught on anything to prevent it from coming back up?” -No, etc.) and that was the end of the hearing. They said they would get back to us with their decision in 15 days.

The outcome was far from what he had hoped.

Despite what I thought was a positive conversation, they replied to Beth basically saying we had a hearing and Beth still owed the full amount- the only difference was their removal of the claim of an “illegal” turn.

Now the claim reads “[your tenant] made a turn on ABC St. beneath the gate. This action caused the gate to malfunction and prevented it from returning to its closed position, resulting in damage.”

No actual accusation of wrongdoing- in fact, admitting that the turn was legal.

Follow-ups with the HOA went nowhere as they would only communicate with the homeowners. They asked for an explanation to which the HOA replied that they “reached their decision after reviewing the evidence.” They gave Beth 30 days (April 4th) to pay the fine.

He tried getting his insurance company involved.

My next action was to attempt to go through my car insurance to fight this BS claim. I submitted a claim, recounted what happened and gave them the information to reach out to the HOA to get statements.

After they stalled waiting on coverage confirmation for a week or so, they attempted to reach out to the HOA and heard nothing back. They essentially needed a demand to be made so that they had a claim that they could process.

However, since the HOA would only deal with the homeowners and they won’t work with renters’ car insurance, the HOA would not provide the proof of damages necessary for the car insurance to process the claim.

So at this point, there was no other remedies left and we would either need to pay for the fine ourselves or fight it in small claims court.

His friends don’t want to go to small claims court.

I immediately tried to convince them to fight this claim out in court- as I am not the liable party, I am not able to fight it on their behalf.

However, my friends had no appetite for a legal battle as they had noticed that they were treated more coldly by the building manager since the incident and they hoped remain in good standing within their community.

Additionally, they are under a lot of life stress due to their upcoming wedding and Charlie starting business school this fall, so paying this fine to make it go away was easily worth it to them.

However, they would be expecting me to repay them in full the fine, despite me wanting to fight it.

He doesn’t think this is fair to him.

This is where I might be the AH:

I said they are able to make that decision to pay off the fine and not fight it further, but I don’t think I should be held liable for any cost here. They are taking away my agency in being able to fight this claim by paying off the fine, so it is not fair to expect me to pay them back for what is ultimately their decision.

They say it is unfair for them, who were completely uninvolved in this incident, to have to fight the HOA in court- a process that is stressful, time-consuming and would put their property at risk (the HOA has a right to put liens on property for unpaid fines).

My girlfriend sees my side that this is unfair, but ultimately would rather just pay them back the full amount to keep the peace. She suggested that maybe a split of the cost would be more fair.

The friendship is over.

This is where we reached an impasse. They decided to pay the fine and uninvite me and my GF from their wedding party and are unwilling to talk about this in person.

My girlfriend is mad at me for being so stubborn and ruining a friendship over $4k (which, while significant for me, ultimately would not put a lot of financial stress on me).

Upon hearing that she was being disinvited from the wedding party, she immediately sent the full amount without consulting me (we don’t have joint finances).

I truly feel terrible for her as she got caught out as collateral damage here- she had been trying to talk me down on it the whole time.

His friends have differing opinions about what he should’ve done.

One of my friends believes that I should have just paid for the fine without fighting it, regardless of the fact it is unfair, and fighting over money is really dumb in the positions we are in (we all work in tech).

Another friend understands the unfairness and believes this talk should have happened in person and a split of some kind is most fair.

I still believe that I should not be held liable for the cost, but would be willing to agree to a split after seeing how much upheaval this has caused.

But I also feel that friendship is a two-way street and them making decisions regarding my money without considering my input feels wrong and unfair that I have to be only one responsible financially for appeasing everyone else.

So, Reddit, AITA?

It’s almost too bad the gate didn’t damage the car. Then they would’ve reported it right away and expected the HOA to cover the repair costs. It seems like the gate is the problem, not the fact that he was turning.

If you enjoyed this story, check out this post about an apartment tenant who is being called petty for blocking her parking space with trash cans.

Let’s see if Reddit agrees.

This person thinks they should go to court.

I’m surprised that was the only comment, but I completely agree. They should go to court. The HOA should pay to fix their own gate instead of finding someone to blame.

Really, the HOA should be glad there wasn’t any damage done to the car.

I have a gate to the driveway at my house, and since it’s not part of an HOA, it’s on me as the homeowner if there’s any damage to the gate or the car. I have had damage to my car because of a problem with the gate, and this same problem also caused damage to the gate itself. It’s on me to pay for both.

The situation could’ve been much worse for the HOA in this story. They could be looking at repair costs for the car.

I wish OP could talk his friends into going to court. I hate seeing the HOA get their way when they’re clearly in the wrong.