Boundaries, easements, construction, foreclosure, and eviction.
Minn. Stat. § 500.20, subd. 2a ends private covenants at 30 years, but eight enumerated exceptions carve out condominiums, cooperatives, CICs under ch. 515B, shared-structure buildings, and affordable housing. What is left is the plain platted subdivision — and a two-year renewal window most claimants never see.
Read →Minnesota riparian rights attach to ownership of the shore, and can also arise from ownership of the bed, but no titleholder gets exclusive control of the surface. Johnson v. Seifert lets every abutting owner use the whole surface regardless of navigability and regardless of who owns the bottom — and three different legal lines govern where your lakeshore ends.
Read →The cartway statute says the town board 'shall' establish a road to a landlocked five-acre parcel. That word is enforceable by mandamus — but it settles whether, not where, and the petitioner pays for all of it.
Read →Minn. Stat. § 504B.285, subd. 2, shifts the burden to the landlord inside 90 days. But by its own words it reaches only a tenancy terminated by notice to quit. Where Minnesota's real retaliation law lives now.
Read →Minnesota's reasonable-use rule is symmetric. The neighbor who berms, plugs, or fills to keep water out is exposed on the same four factors as the neighbor who ditches it downhill.
Read →The $100,000 backstop in Minn. Stat. § 326B.89 requires a final judgment against a licensed contractor. Hire someone unlicensed and you lose it, along with the written-contract rule and the insurance requirement — but § 514.02 runs the other way.
Read →Owner rights under MCIOA beyond assessments: records, meetings, voting, fines, amendments by silence, and the 2026 amendments that take effect January 1, 2027.
Read →Minn. Stat. § 500.19, subd. 5 lets one joint tenant sever a joint tenancy by recording a single instrument, and § 507.02 exempts that severance from the rule requiring both spouses to sign anything touching the homestead. A judgment creditor gets no such power.
Read →Minn. Stat. § 559.217 is permissive — a purchase agreement that cancels by its own terms is already dead. What the statute actually does is decide the deposit, on a first-to-serve basis, and § 82.75 makes it the only way most brokers can release it.
Read →Variances, conditional use permits, the 60-day rule of Minn. Stat. § 15.99, and why the forum for judicial review depends on whether a city or a county said no.
Read →Chapter 344 makes adjoining landowners split the cost of a boundary fence — but since May 31, 2017, only where both parcels are used to produce or maintain livestock. The leading cases construe a trigger the Legislature deleted.
Read →Minnesota gives tenants four express termination rights, and since August 1, 2024, a non-waivable duty-to-mitigate statute that can end the lease outright when a landlord sits on an empty unit.
Read →Chapter 278 petitions rarely die on the filing deadline. They die on May 16, on August 1, and on a one-way door in the Tax Court's Small Claims Division that closes 30 days after you walk through it.
Read →Chapter 429 assessments are limited by the increase in market value the improvement produced. But the assessment roll is prima facie proof the city got it right, and a signed written objection at the hearing is what preserves the fight.
Read →Minn. Stat. § 561.04 trebles tree-trespass damages almost automatically. The fight is never about the multiplier — it is about the number being multiplied, and Minnesota's default measure of tree damage is the diminution in the value of the land.
Read →Minnesota tenants no longer have to prove the landlord's case was baseless. Here is what §484.014 requires now, and what expungement does to screening reports.
Read →Minn. Stat. § 559.01 lets you clear an adverse claim only if you are in possession or the land is vacant. What the statute grants, what it does not reach, and why registered land runs on a different track.
Read →Minn. Stat. § 504B.211 requires a reasonable business purpose, not less than 24 hours' notice, a stated time window, and entry between 8:00 a.m. and 8:00 p.m. Subdivision 6 attaches a per-violation penalty, rescission, and fees.
Read →Minn. Stat. § 507.18, subd. 2 voids the covenant regardless of the year the instrument was executed. The free statutory form in subdivisions 5 and 6 is a title record, not a change in the legal effect — and by its own terms it is unavailable on Torrens property.
Read →Minn. Stat. § 117.031(a) compares the final award to the condemning authority's last written offer, not to its appraisal, and the Minnesota Supreme Court has held the 40 percent figure is a minimum eligibility threshold with the amount set by lodestar. Sections 117.186 and 117.187 add going-concern and minimum-compensation damages, each on its own conditions.
Read →Minn. Stat. ch. 327C gives lot leases seven statutory termination grounds plus park closure, and § 327C.02, subd. 2a, can leave a park owner winning the rule fight and still not getting possession. Chapter 504B keeps applying underneath.
Read →Minn. Stat. § 504B.375 lets a locked-out residential tenant present a verified petition and get an immediate possession order enforced by the sheriff. The section supplies possession, costs, and fees — the damages live in other sections.
Read →Minn. Stat. § 504B.271 and § 504B.365, subd. 3, run on different clocks, different sale procedures, and different liability. Which applies turns on how the tenant left and where the property is stored.
Read →Minn. Stat. § 559.17 is titled 'Mortgage Not a Conveyance; Mortgagee Cannot Possess.' Subdivision 2 is the way around it, and every condition in it is load-bearing.
Read →MCIOA subordinates an association's assessment lien to any first mortgage, then attaches six months of common expenses to whoever takes title out of the foreclosure. Minn. Stat. § 515B.3-116, and the 2026 amendments.
Read →Minn. Stat. § 557.02 lets any party to an action affecting title record a lis pendens without a judge. What the statute requires instead — and what a wrongly recorded notice actually exposes you to.
Read →Everyone knows the 40-year rule in Minn. Stat. § 541.023. The useful law is in the exceptions: registered land, persons in possession, railroads and religious corporations, and covenants that run on a different clock entirely.
Read →What Torrens registration under Minn. Stat. ch. 508 really cuts off, the seven exceptions in § 508.25, and why a reference on the record is not notice while off-record knowledge is.
Read →Minn. Stat. § 65A.01, subd. 3 writes appraisal into every Minnesota fire policy — 20 days to name an appraiser, an itemized award of any two — and provides that nothing is waived by a proceeding relating to appraisal. Hail runs on § 65A.26's ten days and one year.
Read →Under Minn. Stat. § 504B.178, subd. 4, the penalty turns on whether a written statement went out within three weeks — the withheld amount again, on top of what was wrongfully withheld, plus up to $500 for each deposit in bad faith under subd. 7.
Read →The Supreme Court held that federal pesticide law preempts a state failure-to-warn claim over Roundup's label. The rule it used came from a case about a device made in Fridley — and Minnesota's own statute makes the federal label binding here.
Read →Tyler v. Hennepin County made it unconstitutional for a county to keep your surplus after a tax forfeiture. In Pung v. Isabella County, the Court held the surplus is measured by the auction price — not what the home was worth. Minnesota homeowners have six months to claim it.
Read →Minn. Stat. § 363A.09 protects creed, marital status, sexual orientation, gender identity, and status with regard to public assistance — classes the federal Fair Housing Act does not list. That gap decides which statute you sue under.
Read →How the MCWD's permits, the Wetland Conservation Act, and a half-dozen agencies overlap on one project — and why the system is so evidence-heavy for landowners.
Read →45 days for the subcontractor pre-lien notice, 120 days to record and serve the lien statement, one year to sue. Minn. Stat. ch. 514 forgives almost nothing, and the deadlines start earlier than most contractors think.
Read →Minn. Stat. § 504B.321 sets the hearing 7 to 14 days out, and § 504B.291 lets a nonpayment tenant redeem the tenancy any time before possession is delivered. Skip the 14-day residential notice and the case is dismissed and expunged.
Read →Easements arise by grant, implication, and prescription — and Minn. Stat. § 508.02 wipes out the unrecorded ones on Torrens land. But Minn. Stat. § 164.08, subd. 2 says a town board "shall establish a cartway."
Read →Minn. Stat. § 513.55 requires disclosure of material facts "of which the seller is aware," and § 513.57 immunizes everything outside that knowledge. Section 513.60's waiver does not reach the well, septic, meth, or radon statutes.
Read →Adverse possession under Minn. Stat. § 541.02 and boundary by practical location are different doctrines with different elements and different proof. Minn. Stat. § 508.02 bars the first on registered land and expressly preserves the second.
Read →Minn. Stat. ch. 580 lets a mortgagee foreclose without a lawsuit. But Minn. Stat. § 582.30, subd. 2 bars a deficiency judgment after an advertisement foreclosure with a six-month redemption period. The redemption period is the whole case.
Read →Minn. Stat. § 559.21 lets a contract for deed seller terminate the contract by serving a notice and waiting. The cure period is 60 days on most modern contracts, 30 on some, 90 on others — and almost everyone remembers the wrong rule.
Read →Chapter 337 makes broad-form indemnity, additional-insured coverage for someone else's negligence, out-of-state choice of law and forum, and pre-payment lien waivers void in Minnesota building and construction contracts — and deems a 10-day prompt-payment term into every one of them.
Read →Minn. Stat. § 504B.161 makes the covenants of habitability unwaivable, and § 504B.385 lets a residential tenant deposit rent with the court administrator 14 days after written notice. The catch is subdivision 1(d): a tenant may not withhold rent.
Read →Minn. Stat. ch. 558 governs partition actions commenced before August 1, 2025; the new Minnesota Partition Act, ch. 558A, governs everything after. The new act replaces 'great prejudice' with a seven-factor test — and adds attorney fees enforceable against the homestead.
Read →Minn. Stat. § 541.051 gives two years from discovery of the injury and ten years from substantial completion. The ten-year clause is written as a bar on accrual, not on filing — and read with ch. 327A's 1/2/10-year warranties, that changes what it does.
Read →