Boundaries, easements, construction, foreclosure, and eviction.
In September 2025 HUD withdrew its assistance-animal notice. Minnesota's support-animal statute never needed it: what a landlord can ask, what it can't charge, and what faking it costs.
Read →No Minnesota statute caps an apartment application fee. But § 504B.173 controls when a landlord can take it, cash it, and keep it, and it often has to come back.
Read →A new federal rule lets national banks stop paying interest on mortgage escrow. Minnesota's own law already stopped at loans made before July 1, 1996.
Read →In Minnesota a contractor who promises to pay your deductible has committed a misdemeanor. The kicker: once he says it, your insurer doesn't have to look at his estimate.
Read →The Cold Weather Rule starts October 1, and it doesn't ban winter shutoffs. It gives you a right to a payment deal, capped for lower incomes. Propane's not in it.
Read →Minnesota decides church property fights with neutral principles of law. And the denomination's trust clause is usually the weakest document in the file.
Read →Minn. Stat. § 358.645 spells out remote identity proofing down to the number of questions — a method NIST now prohibits. And a bad notarization rarely voids a deed.
Read →Rent plus every nonoptional fee, added up on page one: Minn. Stat. § 504B.120 requires it on leases signed since January 1, 2024, reaches the listing, and trebles damages.
Read →Chapter 116B lets any Minnesota resident sue to protect a natural resource. It gives you no damages, no attorney fees, and an injunction the plaintiff has to prove.
Read →Minn. Stat. § 504B.135 sets the notice period, but an 1891 counting rule decides when the notice actually works — and the 14-day nonpayment notice to quit isn't in the statute anymore.
Read →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's 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 decide where your lakeshore ends.
Read →The cartway statute says the town board 'shall' establish a road to a landlocked five-acre parcel. You can enforce that word 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. Here's 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 really decides is the deposit, first-to-serve, 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 where you go for judicial review turns 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. Since August 1, 2024, it also has 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 behind a one-way door in the Tax Court's Small Claims Division that locks 30 days after you walk through it.
Read →A chapter 429 assessment is 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 keeps the fight alive.
Read →Minn. Stat. § 561.04 trebles tree-trespass damages almost automatically. The fight is never about the multiplier. It's about the number being multiplied, and Minnesota's default measure of tree damage is the drop in the value of the land.
Read →Minnesota tenants don't have to prove the landlord's case was baseless anymore. Here's 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're in possession or the land is vacant. What the statute grants, what it doesn't 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. Then subdivision 6 adds a per-violation penalty, rescission, and fees.
Read →Minnesota's well disclosure certificate can block a county recorder from accepting your deed. The septic disclosure can't, and the statute says so in as many words.
Read →Minn. Stat. ch. 581 lets a mortgagee foreclose through a lawsuit instead of a sheriff's advertisement. The chapter is twelve sections long, and the reason to use it is in § 582.30: the deficiency judgment.
Read →Minn. Stat. ch. 327A gives every new-home buyer 1-, 2-, and 10-year statutory warranties the builder can't waive. Then come sixteen exclusions, a six-month written-notice rule, and a mandatory repair process, and those decide who actually collects.
Read →Minn. Stat. § 507.18, subd. 2 already voids the covenant, no matter what year the instrument was executed. The free statutory form in subdivisions 5 and 6 cleans up the title record. It doesn't change the covenant's legal effect, and by its own terms you can't use it on Torrens property.
Read →Minn. Stat. § 117.031(a) compares the final award to the condemning authority's last written offer, not 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. Here's exactly where.
Read →Minn. Stat. § 504B.375 lets a locked-out residential tenant present a verified petition and get an immediate possession order the sheriff enforces. 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 one applies turns on how the tenant left and where the property ends up 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 carries weight.
Read →Under MCIOA, the association's assessment lien sits behind any first mortgage. Then the mortgage forecloses and six months of common expenses ride along to whoever takes title. Here's how § 515B.3-116 works, and what the 2026 amendments changed.
Read →Minn. Stat. § 557.02 lets any party to an action affecting title record a lis pendens without a judge. Here's 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 actually cuts off, the seven exceptions in § 508.25, and why a reference on the record isn't notice but 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 says 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. Miss it and the landlord owes 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 already 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, at least when the sale is fairly conducted. In Minnesota, you 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. The federal Fair Housing Act doesn't list those classes, and that gap decides which statute you sue under.
Read →How the MCWD's permits, the Wetland Conservation Act, and a half-dozen agencies pile onto one backyard project — and why the landowner carries the burden of proof.
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 clocks 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 gets 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 if you're landlocked, 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 doesn't 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. On registered land, Minn. Stat. § 508.02 bars the first and expressly keeps 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 it writes 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. Here's the catch, in 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. It swaps 'great prejudice' for a seven-factor test and adds attorney fees you can enforce against the homestead.
Read →Minn. Stat. § 541.051 gives you two years from discovery of the injury and ten years from substantial completion. The ten-year clause bars the claim from accruing, not from being filed. Read it next to ch. 327A's 1/2/10-year warranties and that changes what it does.
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