The minutes of a condominium owners' meeting

No. 1 of article 1 leaves no room: «Minutes of owners' meetings are mandatorily drawn up, written and signed by whoever took part in them as chair and subscribed by all the owners present at them.»

The sentence hands out three roles. Drawing up the minutes is mandatory at each and every meeting. Writing and signing them falls to whoever took part as chair of the meeting — not necessarily the administrator, who may not chair it at all. And subscribing them falls to the owners present. From this follows a practical consequence right at the start of the meeting: if nobody is appointed chair, the person the statute charges with the drafting and the signature is missing.

«Signed» and «subscribed» are distinct acts in the same article: the signature is that of whoever chaired, the subscription that of those present. That is why no. 7 speaks of subscription when it allows the declaration sent by email.

No. 2 fixes the minimum content: the minutes «contain a summary of what essentially took place at the owners' meeting, indicating in particular the date and place of the meeting, the owners present and absent, the matters considered, the decisions taken and the resolutions passed with the result of each vote, and the fact that the minutes were read and approved».

Two of these elements are the ones most often missing from real minutes. The first is the list of absent owners: without it there is no knowing to whom the 30-day communication under article 1432, no. 9, must be made. The second is the result of each vote — not «approved», but how many votes and what value they represent, which is what allows anyone to check that the majority required by law was reached.

The adverb «in particular» says the list is not closed, and some things are always worth recording: the address of an owner who asked to be convened by email (article 1432, no. 2) and the amount of the annual contributions with the due date (article 6, no. 1).

This is where Law 8/2022 changed the day-to-day work. No. 6 allows two ways of signing and subscribing: «by qualified electronic signature or by handwritten signature, affixed to the original document or to a scanned document containing other signatures». The second half of that sentence is what solves the problem of the sheet that travels from door to door: it allows signatures to be collected in series, without gathering everybody in the same room.

No. 7 goes further and dispenses with the signature: «the owner's declaration, sent by email to the address of the condominium administration, stating that they agree with the content of the minutes sent to them by the same means, counts as subscription, and that declaration must be attached, as an annex, to the original of the minutes.»

Four requirements, and all of them count: the minutes sent to the owner by email; the declaration sent by email; to the address of the condominium administration; and attached as an annex to the original of the minutes. A message kept only in the administrator's inbox does not meet the last one.

No. 8 gives the choice to the administration: it is for the administration to choose one or more of the means provided for and to set the order of collection, «so as to ensure that the signatures are affixed to a single document».

The electronic signature no. 6 speaks of is the qualified one. An image of a signature pasted into a PDF is not a qualified electronic signature.

No. 3 is the most important rule in the article and the least known: «The effectiveness of the decisions depends on the approval of the respective minutes, regardless of whether they have been signed by the owners.»

It has two readings, and both are useful. The first: until the minutes are approved, the decision produces no effects — there is no quota to demand and no works awarded. The second: once the minutes are approved, a missing owner's signature stops nothing.

No. 4 extends the reach beyond the condominium: «Decisions duly recorded in the minutes are binding both on the owners and on third parties holding rights relating to the fractions.» And no. 5 closes the circle on the custody side: it falls to the administrator, even a provisional one, to keep the minutes and make them available for consultation to both.

The idea that the law sets a deadline for sending the minutes to owners circulates often. Article 1 of Decree-Law 268/94 sets no deadline at all for that sending — not 10, not 15, not 30 days. What it does require is that the minutes be drawn up, that they contain what no. 2 lists, and that they be kept and made available for consultation.

The 30-day period that does exist is a different one with a different object: under article 1432, no. 9, of the Civil Code, decisions must be communicated to all absent owners within 30 days, by registered letter with acknowledgement of receipt or by email, in which case the conditions in nos. 2 and 3 of the same article apply.

Once the communication is made, the absent owner has 90 days after receipt to state in writing their assent or dissent (no. 10), and silence is considered approval (no. 11) — but it only counts as approval if the communication was made. On the execution side, decisions that are not challenged are carried out by the administrator within a maximum of 15 working days, or within the period the assembly sets, save for duly substantiated impossibility (article 1436, no. 1, paragraph i)).

There being no statutory sending deadline is not an invitation not to send. It is the communication under article 1432, no. 9, that starts the reaction period of whoever was absent — and without it, that period never begins to run.

Minutes can serve as the basis for enforcement, but only if they contain two precise elements. No. 1 of article 6 requires that the minutes of the meeting that decided the amount of the contributions state «the annual amount payable by each owner and the due date of the corresponding obligations».

With those requirements met, no. 2 says that such minutes «constitute an enforcement title against the owner who fails to pay their share within the period established», and no. 3 adds default interest at the legal rate and the pecuniary sanctions approved at a meeting or provided for in the regulation. This is why the wording of the budget item is not a formality: minutes that approve «the budget presented» without recording the annual amount per owner and the due date do not meet the requirements of no. 1.

The debt recovery guide walks through the rest of article 6 — the 90-day deadline for bringing the action and the social support index threshold.

The assembly may only decide on what appeared in the agenda of the notice (article 1432, no. 4). When that does not happen, or when the decision is contrary to the law or to a previously approved regulation, it is voidable at the request of any owner who did not approve it (article 1433, no. 1).

The deadlines are short, and they run from the decision for those who attended and from the communication for those who did not. Decree-Law 268/94 does not govern the correction of minutes already approved: what the law governs is the reaction to the decision itself, under article 1433, and the correct record of what happened, under no. 2 of article 1.