Violation of House Rules: A Guide for Co-owners – How to Resolve Neighbor Disputes and What are the Actual Procedures in Croatia?

Living in a multi-apartment building requires mutual respect and compromise. However, we often encounter situations where individuals disregard the rules of communal living, whether it concerns excessive noise, leaving items in hallways, or inadequate care of common areas.

When such situations arise, co-owners often expect swift intervention or direct punishment of neighbors by the building manager. It is important to know, however, that the manager is neither an inspector nor the police and cannot act outside strict legal frameworks. The new Act on the Management and Maintenance of Buildings has clearly defined procedures that protect all co-owners but also require your active involvement.

To make it easier to resolve these challenges, we provide a clear overview of the steps the building can and should take.

1. Interventions: When to call the authorities instead of the building manager?

For situations requiring an immediate on-site response, the building manager has no legal authority to act. In such cases, you must directly contact the competent authorities:

Noise and disturbance of public order: For loud music, parties, and noise during quiet hours, the Police are exclusively responsible.

Illegal construction works: For the demolition of load-bearing walls or dangerous construction activities, the Building Inspection is responsible.

Waste in the courtyard (Municipal Wardens): Municipal wardens act exclusively on external surfaces and courtyards that are visible from a public area (street). The wardens have no authority to resolve issues regarding items left inside the building, in hallways, and on staircases. Furthermore, according to recent constitutional and judicial practice, the possibility of "collective punishment" of buildings has been abolished. This means a municipal warden can no longer simply issue a fine to the entire building and collect it from your joint reserve fund due to anonymous waste, but must identify and penalize exclusively the individual who left the waste.

2. Prerequisite for Collecting Fines: Inclusion in the Co-ownership Agreement

General House Rules (such as quiet hours, permitted noise levels, and the prohibition of waste accumulation) are prescribed by the competent Ministry. Therefore, co-owners do not have to worry about drafting basic rules, as those prescribed by law apply directly. Of course, if desired, co-owners can vote by majority to adopt their own special rules tailored to the specific needs of your building.

However, regardless of whether general or your special rules are violated, in order to financially penalize an offender, co-owners must complete one crucial formal step. By a decision of the absolute majority (based on ownership share), the obligation to pay a fine for violating the House Rules must be incorporated into the Co-ownership Agreement, and the exact amount of that fine must be defined within the legal range of 50.00 to 500.00 EUR. Without this clause in the agreement, collecting any fines is legally impossible.

3. Collecting Signatures: How is a violation officially determined?

Once the fines are defined in the agreement, any co-owner who notices a violation can document it and initiate the process for sending a warning. The violation is legally determined only when the absolute majority of co-owners signs the decision on non-compliance with the House Rules.

When creating a signature collection list, a very simple format is used: the list provides a space exclusively for the signatures of those who agree with the report. Columns for expressing agreement or disagreement are not added, because the failure to sign the list is automatically considered as disagreement.

4. The Difference Between Items Left in the Hallway and Occasional Noise

The law clearly distinguishes between types of violations, which directly affects how the manager can send warnings:

Violations of a more permanent nature (e.g., belongings and waste in the common hallway): An official warning will specify a reasonable deadline for removing the items. If the neighbor does not remove the items, a new warning can be sent as soon as that deadline expires, without the need to collect signatures again.

Occasional, recurring violations (e.g., noise and parties): Each new incident (e.g., another night party after a few weeks) is considered a completely new event. To send a new warning for this new event, it is necessary to collect the signatures of the absolute majority of co-owners again to officially determine that specific new violation.

5. Issuing a Fine Decision and the Actual Process of Forced Collection

The financial penalization procedure is designed to give the offender an opportunity to correct their behavior. A decision to collect a fine is issued only if the same co-owner receives three official warnings within a two-year period. All funds collected in this way are paid directly into the building's joint reserve account.

It is important to be aware of what the forced collection process looks like in practice if the offender refuses to voluntarily pay the issued fine:

Initiating enforcement: The building manager, on behalf of the co-owners, first initiates an enforcement procedure based on an document.

Filing an objection and going to court: If the offender files an objection against the writ of execution (which often happens in practice when someone disputes a fine), the enforcement procedure is suspended, and the case is automatically transferred to the competent court. From that moment, a real lawsuit begins.

Costs and burden of proof: In a court proceeding, the burden of proof lies with the building. The building must confirm to the court with irrefutable evidence that the violation was indeed committed, which can be extremely complex for issues like noise. All court and legal fees during this process must be advanced by the building from the joint reserve funds of all co-owners.

Risk of losing the dispute: The final verdict is made exclusively by a judge. If the court assesses that the evidence is not strong enough and rules in favor of the offender, the building loses the dispute. In that case, the significant financial resources the building invested in lawyers and fees remain permanently lost from your reserve fund.

Due to the stated legal and financial risks, punishing neighbors is a measure that should be approached with extreme caution and only with solid evidence, while resolving disagreements through a peaceful, neighborly agreement always remains the safest and most favorable option for all co-owners.