Body Corporate Dispute Lawyers in Melbourne

Owners corporation, body corporate, same fight

What Victoria used to call a body corporate is now an owners corporation, and the rules that decide your dispute come with the new name. Everyone still says body corporate, and if that is what brought you here, you are in the right place.

Whether you are a lot owner staring at a levy notice you dispute, a committee member trying to move on a manager, or an owners corporation owed a year of fees by one lot, the argument almost always comes back to the ledger and the minutes. MK Law acts on both sides of these disputes across Melbourne and Victoria, which means we have usually seen your opponent’s argument from the other direction. The first call is free: 1800 130 120.

Owed levies by one lot, or billed charges that should come off?

For owners corporations, unpaid levies are a cash flow problem that compounds, because the building’s insurance, maintenance and utilities do not pause while one owner withholds. We issue final fee notices that hold up and take recovery through VCAT, with penalty interest where a general meeting has authorised it. An order is not the same thing as being paid, and once the argument is only about getting the money out of a lot owner who will not part with it, the file becomes body corporate debt recovery rather than a governance dispute.

For lot owners, the leverage runs the other way. Penalty interest is capped at 10 per cent a year, and it needs a general meeting resolution behind it. Reminder fees, administration charges and debt collection costs cannot simply be added to your ledger without a VCAT order. We audit the ledger, strip out what should never have been charged, and settle the balance that is genuinely owed. If you dispute the levy itself, the attack is almost always procedural: whether the meeting was properly noticed and the resolution properly passed.

A manager the building cannot shift, or a committee out of control?

A manager who does not perform costs a building twice: once in fees, again in the maintenance and insurance problems that pile up unattended. The exit route runs through the contract of appointment and a general meeting vote, and where the manager has breached the duties to act honestly and in good faith and to exercise due care and diligence, through VCAT. Manager obligations are tighter now than they have ever been, so committees have more to work with than most realise.

Committee fights are the other side of the coin: a committee spending outside its authority, decisions made without quorum, or a faction running the building for its own lots. The law fixes what a committee may decide and what needs a vote of the whole owners corporation, and VCAT can unwind decisions made outside those limits.

Complained and nothing happens? There is a ladder, and skipping rungs costs you

Disputes are expected to climb a ladder. Step one is the owners corporation’s internal grievance procedure. Step two is conciliation through Consumer Affairs Victoria. Step three is VCAT, which hears owners corporation matters at modest cost and can make binding orders about fees, rules, managers and committee conduct. Getting the early rungs right is how you arrive at VCAT with a record showing you were the reasonable party, so it is worth doing properly. We run the ladder with you and we move quickly through it.

If your dispute is really about the owners corporation refusing to repair common property that is damaging your lot, that is a rights-and-repairs fight rather than a governance one, and we cover it on the strata disputes page. Plenty of owners in a long-running dispute decide the answer is simply to sell and get out of the building, and that plan stops dead if a caveat on property turns up on the final title search. For anything that reaches the title rather than the ledger, you want our property dispute lawyers.

Talk to a body corporate lawyer today

Call 1800 130 120 or use the form on this page. Bring the levy notice, the manager’s contract or the disputed minutes, and we will tell you on the call whether you have a case worth running.