Delaware Homeowner Asked About $44,329.59 HOA Loan. Court Made Them Answer.

Gwendolyn Colston kept coming back to one number: $44,329.59. Somewhere in the financial life of her own homeowners association, that figure showed up as a loan — and when she asked the simplest questions about it, who made the loan and where the money stood, she says she hit a wall of silence. So she did what the HOA rulebook never expects a homeowner to do. She took them to court.

On October 5, 2026, Delaware’s Court of Chancery answered at least part of her question. Judge Christian Douglas Wright ruled that the developer behind The Greens at Wyoming, the community where Colston owns her home, must hand over details about the $44,329.59 loan — including the lender’s identity and the loan’s current status, according to the ruling.

It was not a total victory, and it was not a defeat for the other side either. The judge entered a default judgment against the developer for failing to show up and defend itself — then went claim by claim, granting some of Colston’s demands and tossing others. What survived, and what didn’t, says a lot about how far one homeowner can push when the people managing her community’s money won’t talk.

Colston filed her original complaint on January 24, 2024, naming The Greens at Wyoming Homeowners Association, Inc., its developer, The Greens at Wyoming, LLC, and several individuals tied to the community, according to the ruling. The dispute, at its core, was about how the community was being run — its finances, its maintenance, and who was responsible for what.

The case turned into a slow procedural grind. On September 3, 2025, Colston amended her complaint to add the developer as a defendant. On February 10, 2026, she asked the court for a default judgment, arguing the developer had simply never responded. But on May 20, 2026, the court said no — not because her claims were wrong, but because she had not properly served the developer with the legal papers.

She fixed the paperwork. Service was completed on July 6, 2026, and Colston filed her motion again — this time seeking a forensic audit of the association’s finances, proper maintenance of the community’s ponds and ditches, and full disclosure of the loan she says was taken out against the association.

This time, the judge agreed that the developer’s silence had consequences. Finding that the developer had failed to appear, plead, or otherwise defend after being served, the court entered default judgment under Court of Chancery Rule 55(b). Then came the harder part: deciding which of Colston’s demands the law actually supported.

What She Won — and What the Court Refused

The biggest headline win for Colston was the loan itself. The court ordered the developer to provide her with information about the $44,329.59 loan — the lender, and where the loan currently stands. For a homeowner who says she spent years asking basic questions about her community’s money and getting nowhere, that order is the whole point.

She also won on the ponds. The court directed the developer to properly maintain the community’s ponds and ditches, ruling that the developer remains responsible for those areas until ownership is legally transferred. What she did not get was money — the court said it could not grant her monetary relief on those maintenance claims.

And the forensic audit she wanted? Denied. The court found that several sections of the Delaware Uniform Common Interest Ownership Act that Colston cited simply did not apply to her community, because The Greens at Wyoming was established before the act took effect. Her claims under the Delaware Insurance Code and the Administrative Procedures Act failed for a similar reason — the court ruled those laws pertained to different entities altogether.

In other words, the developer’s failure to show up did not mean Colston automatically won everything. The judge checked each claim against the law and threw out the ones that did not fit — a detail that matters, because it means the parts of the ruling that survived carry real legal weight.

The Question Dividing Every HOA Neighborhood

Strip away the case numbers and the procedural history, and Colston’s fight comes down to a question that echoes in HOA communities across the country: when the people managing your neighborhood’s money won’t open the books, how much are they actually required to show you?

Homeowners tend to answer that question one way. Their argument is simple and hard to dismiss — it is their dues, their assessments, their home values on the line. A $44,329.59 loan taken out against the association is, in their view, their business by definition. When boards or developers stonewall, as Colston alleges happened here, it reads as an admission that something needs hiding.

Boards and developers see it differently. Managing a community’s finances involves contracts, legal exposure, and governing documents that spell out exactly what must be disclosed and when. From their side, a homeowner demanding a forensic audit or line-by-line answers can look less like transparency and more like a fishing expedition — expensive, disruptive, and outside what the law requires. The fact that the court rejected Colston’s audit request under the DUCIOA gives that side something real to point to.

Neither side is going away. The overwhelming majority of new American homes are built inside some form of community association, and every one of those communities runs on the same fragile bargain: homeowners pay, boards manage, and everyone trusts the numbers add up. Cases like this one test what happens when the trust runs out.

For now, the developer still has to produce the loan details — and the ruling is not the final word. The court’s order leaves the door open to further proceedings, and the developer could still appeal. Whether Colston’s years-long fight inspires other homeowners to start asking their own questions about their own associations’ books is the part no judge can decide.