Trustees are obliged to give sectional title owners access to minutes of meetings and to allow owners to attend trustee meetings

Published: December 1, 2009 Posted in: Sectional Title Advice:

Although many owners of sectional title units take minimal interest in the actions and decisions of their bodies corporate – at least until things are clearly going very wrong – there will always be some who will resent not being informed. In these circumstances suspicions and allegations, true or false, tend to proliferate.

Michael Bauer, general manager of IHFM property management company, says there is a simple solution to this situation: owners should ask the trustees for copies of their minutes.

“In terms of the legally binding prescribed management rule No 34 trustees have to make the minutes of their proceedings and of the body corporate available to any of their owners or mortgagees,” says Bauer.

“Prescribed management rule 15 (5) stipulates that owners are also entitled to attend any trustee meetings and to ask questions – although they are not allowed to vote.”

He says owners sometimes discover that the trustees’ meetings are not being held as regularly as specified – or even that minutes are not being kept. It may transpire that issues pertaining to the scheme are not being tracked and monitored by the trustees and that the managing agents are not fulfilling their duties or that they are not receiving full co-operation from the trustees.

“Trustees are required by law to keep minutes of their proceedings, recording all special resolutions and resolutions taken by the body corporate,” says Bauer.

Call Michael Bauer on 083 255 4442.