Failure Of Unit Owners To Comply With Expense Sharing
Republic of Turkey
Supreme Court of Appeals
18th Civil Chamber
Case No.: 2012/9381
Decision No.: 2012/11154
Date: 15.10.2012
After determining that the appeal was filed within the prescribed time limit, all documents in the case file were reviewed and the following decision was reached:
In the petition filed by the plaintiff, it was stated that a manager was elected at the meeting of the condominium owners held on 15.01.2011, that according to Article 20 of the Condominium Law, the principle is that common expenses are paid in proportion to the land shares, and that although this principle was implemented, the defendants objected to it, and that the owners’ insistence on equal distribution of fuel and other common expenses had put the management in a difficult position. The plaintiff requested the judge’s intervention in the dispute arising from the failure to comply with the distribution of common expenses. The court accepted the case and ruled that the defendants should contribute to the common expenses in proportion to their land shares, as specified in Article 20/b of the Condominium Law.
Article 20 of the Condominium Law regulates the proportion in which each condominium owner shall contribute to common expenses, unless otherwise agreed among them. Accordingly, condominium owners may determine common expenses at a condominium owners’ meeting, or the method of sharing expenses may be determined by the management plan; otherwise, the provisions of Article 20 of the Condominium Law shall apply. An apartment owner who claims that the decision of the apartment owners’ committee is contrary to the management plan or the provisions of the Law may file a lawsuit for annulment against the decision of the apartment owners’ committee regarding common expenses. Therefore, while the lawsuit should have been dismissed, it was not considered correct to decide on the distribution of common expenses in accordance with Article 20 of the Condominium Law, disregarding the management plan and overriding the will of the apartment owners.
Accordingly, the written ruling was inappropriate without considering the principles explained above, and the appeals were well-founded for these reasons. Therefore, the ruling was REVERSED pursuant to Article 428 of the Code of Civil Procedure. The advance appeal fee shall be refunded to the appellant upon request. This decision was made unanimously on October 15, 2012.