Merifield Covenants

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The covenants on the right represent 16 major areas of the Merifield, Inc. (MI) sections of Merifield Acres. While there are some differences between the covenants, all MI covenants have the same paragraph 10 that fails to commit MALA to any duty to perform maintenance, having the operative word "may" instead of the required "shall". This prevents MALA from qualifying under the Virginia Property Owners' Association Act, which is the only mechanism that would otherwise be available to MALA in order for it to legally record statutory liens, and to sell property at an extrajudicial sale.

The Fielding covenants are provided for your reference only - they have no applicability to the lien issue.

The lien issue arose in 2009 after MALA and the Fielding Covenant Committee discovered through two separate legal opinions that MALA did not qualify to come under the jurisdiction of the Virginia Property Owners' Association Act (VPOAA). An important aspect of not being under the VPOAA was that MALA was not authorized to simply go down to the courthouse and record a lien against a delinquent property owner. Then president of MALA Ben Jackson immediately put an immediate halt to the practice of recording such liens, and switched MALA over to the practice of filing warrants-in-debt with the local district court (which is a legally accepted practice). It appears that some time in 2012, MALA began again recording memoranda of lien against property owners. For some reason, MALA chose to ignore the powerful opinion letter from Chadwick, Moriarity, Washington, Elmore and Bunn (CWMEB) and began operating outside of the law, according to its own acquired opinion.

Merifield Covenants

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Background on the Lien Issue