The rights of sectional title owners are quietly ignored

In too many schemes, minutes are paraphrased, proxies misused and records filtered through managing agents. The law is clear - but the everyday practice often is not.

- By Annerize Kolbé

When the official minutes of my sectional title scheme reduced my formal statutory submission to “a letter of concern from an owner living abroad”, I realised how easily the law can disappear once managing agents and trustees control the record.

As both an attorney and owner, I had lodged a written submission under the Sectional Titles Schemes Management Act (STSMA) and its prescribed management rules (PMRs). I cited the relevant provisions, requested that it be tabled and minuted, and raised specific legal issues. What appeared later was a paraphrased version that stripped it of legal force.

Distance, age and the absence of a local attorney firm letterhead made it easier to play down my participation, a familiar pattern in many schemes where owners who are younger, abroad or less visible are treated as peripheral contributors. Yet ownership alone confers full membership rights; the law does not rank owners by geography or demographics.

The issue has gained new urgency since the Community Schemes Ombud Service (CSOS) Consolidated Practice Directives 2025, signed on 18 July 2025, which re-emphasise trustees' record-keeping, disclosure and maintenance obligations. This directive consolidates and replaces all previous CSOS practice documents, setting a uniform national standard for governance in community schemes.

It explicitly reaffirms that rules or practices inconsistent with the STSMA or the PMRs will not be recognised, and imposes stricter expectations of proper minutes, transparency and equal treatment of owners.

The directive aims to standardise compliance in all community schemes, but its impact will depend on whether managing agents and trustees actually apply its requirements beyond the paperwork.

When culture trumps the law

Three duties sit at the heart of every body corporate under the STSMA: