Today’s topic is a fairly common question when appointing a community president. Sometimes a property owner cannot directly carry out their duties as president. What happens then? Can their child fill the position? Let’s see what the law says.
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Horizontal Property Act
The Spanish Horizontal Property Act (LPH) governs everything related to communities of owners. This means everything from appointing community office bearers to calling and holding meetings. The act contains 24 articles, of which Article 13 interests us most here.
What Article 13.2 of the Horizontal Property Act says
The article sets out how the office bearers in a community of owners are organised. Under the act, a community president must be appointed. However, Clause 2 of Article 13 states that the appointed owner may seek judicial intervention in asking to be relieved from the position, citing the reasons that prevent him/her from accepting the post.
The Horizontal Property Act is very clear on this matter. The president of a community must be one of the co-owners of a dwelling. This rule also applies to the naming of a vice-president of the community of owners. Therefore, sons or daughters of owners cannot take the position unless they own some private element of the community. In other words, kinship or a family relationship is not enough to assume the position of president.
What happens if the president’s agreement is declared void?
If a court declares the appointment of a community president void, the president’s procedural actions and power will also be void. In summary, void agreements adopted by the owners’ meeting that are contrary to the Horizontal Property Act are not remediable by the passage of time. That is, they will never be considered valid. On the other hand, there is another type of agreement that can be annulled and challenged within certain periods of time to be remedied and thereby made valid.
In summary, the president is the legal representative of the community and must be appointed solely by the owners’ meeting by majority agreement at a meeting and through rotating appointments or lottery. If a judge agrees to an owner’s request to be relieved from the position, the judge must appoint a substitute president as part of the same ruling, who will occupy the position until a new judicial resolution.
If you have any questions or wish to talk about something with your property manager after reading this article, remember that you can contact us whenever you need to through the Mediterráneo app, which you can download free at this link.