Legal Question in Real Estate Law in California

You owe HOA fees that accrue up to the date you no longer own a property subject to a HOA. Once you no longer own the property, the fees stop accruing but you still owe any unpaid fees that accrued while you owned the property. If you filed bankruptcy after that, the HOA debt would be discharged, but ONLY IF you properly included the HOA in the bankruptcy as a creditor. No debt that is not listed in the bankruptcy schedules is discharged. So if you thought you no longer owed the fees because you lost the house, and therefore did not list the HOA debt in the bankruptcy, the debt was not discharged. I am not a bankruptcy attorney, so I am not sure about this, but I believe there is a process for reopening a bankruptcy to add debts that were unintentionally omitted from the case before. You would need to check with a debtor's-side bankruptcy attorney on whether that is correct and if it might apply to your situation.