Grandfathered covenants

RebeccaT3 (Colorado)
Posts: 1

Posted:

In our subdivision we have covenants that have been around for awhile--have been grandfathered in. As an example, even though we are zoned residential, there is provision for a cow if you have 9/10 of an acre. However, even with the grandfathered portions, we have never allowed chickens.

Our county made a change in October to allow 4 female fowl in areas that are zoned residential, so we wanted to add in a line that would allow what the county allows.

What came up in discussion and what led me to you is this: if we add a line to allow what the county allows, would this in any way make our "grandfathered" portions invalid? In other words, we don't want to accidentally change more of our covenant than we are voting on.

JanetB2 (Colorado)
Posts: 4,219

Posted:

Quote:

Posted By RebeccaT3 on 04/14/2017 9:42 PM
In our subdivision we have covenants that have been around for awhile--have been grandfathered in. As an example, even though we are zoned residential, there is provision for a cow if you have 9/10 of an acre. However, even with the grandfathered portions, we have never allowed chickens.

Our county made a change in October to allow 4 female fowl in areas that are zoned residential, so we wanted to add in a line that would allow what the county allows.

What came up in discussion and what led me to you is this: if we add a line to allow what the county allows, would this in any way make our "grandfathered" portions invalid? In other words, we don't want to accidentally change more of our covenant than we are voting on.

My city about 3 years ago changed the ordinance to allow up to 6 chickens in residential area. Their thought process was HOA's could then choose to amend their CCR's to NOT allow chickens if they desire.

You potentially should check with an attorney. If you want to allow ... you could possibly just add a line in the section governing animals: A maximum of four (4) female fowl will be allowed on each residential lot meeting the requirements of the local County Government. This way if the government requires certain lot size, fencing, etc., then the owner will need to meet those requirements and if not met then report them to the government agency. Something like this would not delete or change anything else in the documents, unless your documents already state No Fowl allowed in which case that would need to be deleted in order to allow in future.