Legal Question in Real Estate Law in Maryland

Re: Homeowners Association

There is no statute of limitations involved in this. The bylaws of the HOA may shed some light on the enforceability of the covenant at this late date, but it probably won't. MD law gives HOA's wide authority to enforce their own regulations--they're treated like governments.

As long as they follow procedure as set forth in the bylaws, they can probably require you to replace your storm door with one which complies with the architectural guidelines. Your only "out" might be if you can establish that the HOA or the property manager if there is one has known about the storm door for a long time and didn't do anything about it until now. This might give you an argument known as "laches", which means they forfeited their right to enforce the covenant by sitting on their hands for so long, and that it would therefore be unfair to require you to remove it now.