Verbal Agreements and Tree Maintenance

I am a newly elected board member, with a newly elected board President. We inherited a long-standing HOA issue regarding responsibility for tree maintenance. Its a long story, but in essence the following occured:
A homeowner purchased about 50 trees for his property and planted them too close together. When he learned that, he offered to transplant about 30 of the trees to 2 properties that line the common road to the common area (the properties are not part of the common area). The previous homeowners agreed to have the trees on their property, if the HOA would maintain them. Supposedly this was agreed to many years ago, and there is no documentation. Now the 30 trees need maintenance (pruning, etc) and the property owners are asking the HOA to pay for it. The HOA believes the trees to be on individual property, and therefore the responsibility of the property owners. Anyone know of any guidelines or precedents on a matter like this?

verbal contracts are not worth the paper they are printed on. Legally, they are just as binding, however, proving the provisions is next to impossible.

Unless you have some good, trustworthy evidence (people you believe, who were there, etc.), I would say Roger is right.. what was agreed upon can't be proven, so the HOA should stick with doing what they are supposed to do, and that is take care of common areas, not private property.

I wouldn't agree to maintain them. I would ask for documentation of the agreement because you can't rely on handshake and verbal agreements that may have been made. You may want to find out who was on the board at that time and if they still live there ask them about this. Otherwise it sounds like someone is just trying to cover a mistake he made many years ago.