Every board takes this call. A fence panel came down in the wind, a sprinkler head is soaking the sidewalk, a tree limb landed on somebody's shed. The owner wants to know who pays, and they want to know today.
There is no national rule that answers it. Two communities on the same street can split the same component in opposite directions, because the split lives in each association's own recorded documents rather than in state law. FindLaw's overview of what associations may regulate lists roofing, siding, fences, hedges and landscaping among the things a typical association's documents reach, and notes that as long as those rules do not violate state or federal law, they are as restrictive as the community decided when it wrote them. So the first move is never to guess from what a neighboring community does.
Read the declaration before you read anything else
Your CC&Rs are the operative document. They define common area, they define the lot or unit, and somewhere in them a maintenance article assigns repair, replacement and upkeep to one party or the other. Bylaws and rules can add procedure on top of that, but they cannot move a component the declaration already assigned. Nolo's summary of the basic governing documents sets out how the articles, bylaws and declaration stack, and our guide to CC&Rs walks through how the pieces fit together.
Three things trip boards up when they read that article.
The first is that maintenance, repair and replacement are three separate words, and a declaration can hand them to different parties. A fairly common arrangement gives the owner routine maintenance of a component while the association carries replacement when it reaches the end of its life. Read all three words every time.
The second is that "common area" is a defined term, not a description. A strip of grass that looks communal may sit inside a platted lot, and a private drive may be common area even though only four homes use it. The plat and the legal description settle it, not the eye.
The third is the exclusive-use category. Some declarations create a middle tier, a piece of common area that only one home can practically use, and split its cost: the association maintains the structure, the owner covers the surface or the cosmetic side. Boards that miss this tier end up either paying for something they never agreed to or refusing something they owe.
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The components that cause the most arguments
Fences. Perimeter fencing along a street or a greenbelt is usually association property because it is part of the community's face. Fencing between two lots is usually shared by those two owners and is nobody's association business. A fence that does both jobs is the one that generates the call.
Roofs and exteriors. In a single-family community the owner almost always carries the roof, the siding and the paint, and the association's role is enforcement of standards rather than repair. In townhomes the split moves around, and it moves in ways that matter to your reserve study, so pin it down before budget season.
Sidewalks and pavement. Walks in common area belong to the association. Walks in the public right of way may belong to the city, or the city may assign them to the adjacent owner by ordinance, which is a rule your declaration cannot override.
Trees. Ownership commonly follows the trunk rather than the canopy, so a tree rooted in common area is usually treated as the association's tree even when its branches hang over three lots, and the reverse usually holds too. Treat that as the starting assumption and not the answer, because your declaration and any local tree ordinance are what actually settle it.
Irrigation. Follow the meter and the valve. A common-area system feeding lot-side beds is a familiar source of dispute, and the answer usually sits in the plans rather than the declaration.
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Turn the answer into a chart
Once the board has worked through the declaration, write the result down as a table with three columns: the component, who maintains it, who replaces it. Add a fourth column for the section of the declaration each row came from, because that citation is what ends the argument in the driveway six months from now.
Then publish it. A responsibility chart that lives in a board member's email is not doing any work. Post it in the document library, hand it to every new owner with the welcome material, and reference the row by number when you answer a request. Boards running HOA-OS keep the chart in the same document library that holds the CC&Rs and the bylaws, so an owner looking for the rule and the answer finds both in one place.
Have counsel read the chart before it goes out if any row was a close call, because a chart is a statement of position and a wrong row can be read as a waiver later. Date it as well, so the next board knows which version it is looking at.
Pull your declaration this week, mark the maintenance article, and get the first draft of the chart in front of the board at the next meeting.