The short version of Montenegrin co-ownership circulates widely: you may sell your share freely, and the other co-owners have a right of pre-emption. That is correct, and it is roughly a tenth of what decides these cases.
The rest is in Articles 131 to 152 of the Zakon o svojinsko-pravnim odnosima, and it answers the questions people actually arrive with. Who decides to renovate. Who can mortgage the property. What happens if one co-owner stops paying. Whether a sibling can be stopped from forcing a sale. And what a court will actually do when nobody agrees.
If the problem is that the register shows the wrong owner rather than too many owners, that is a different question — see when the registration is wrong. For the general purchase framework, the land purchase guide.
What you can always do, and the ten days that follow it
Article 131 puts co-ownership on an undivided thing where each co-owner's share is determined — a half, a third, 3/8.
Article 132 then does four things at once.
A co-owner has the right to hold and use the thing together with the others, proportionately to their share, without infringing the rights of the other co-owners.
A co-owner may dispose of their share without the consent of the other co-owners. That is the sentence the summaries quote, and it is genuinely unqualified: no permission, no veto.
On a sale of the share, the other co-owners have a right of pre-emption. And here is the operative detail the summaries leave out: if the co-owner does not accept within 10 days from the day the written offer for the purchase of the share was delivered to them, the offeror may sell the share to a third party.
Ten days, running from delivery of a written offer. Not thirty. Not from when they heard about it.
Finally, fruits and other income from the thing are divided among the co-owners proportionately to the size of their shares. Rent included.
Decisions are counted in value, not in heads
This is where foreign co-owners are most often wrong, because three people do not mean three votes.
Ordinary management (Article 134) requires the consent of co-owners whose shares together make up more than half the value of the thing. A co-owner with 60% decides ordinary management alone.
Two safety valves sit in the same article. If that consent is not reached and the work is necessary for the ordinary maintenance of the thing, the court decides. And — the part worth remembering — any co-owner may ask the court to decide even where the majority by value has agreed, if the work being undertaken may cause substantial damage to the other co-owners. The majority is not the last word.
The article ends with a tie-break: where there is doubt whether a matter exceeds ordinary management, it is treated accordingly by the statute's own rule rather than by the majority's say-so.
Appointing and dismissing a manager (Article 135) takes the same more-than-half-of-value consent. The manager is the co-owners' mandatary: unless the co-owners determine otherwise, the rules on mandate govern the manager's rights, duties and the ending of their authority. That is a lighter, more revocable relationship than owners usually assume.
Regulating the manner of use (Article 136) — who uses which room, which season, which parking space — also takes more than half of the value.
What needs everybody
Article 138 lists what goes beyond ordinary management, and it is the list to read before signing anything:
alienation of the whole thing, change of the purpose of the thing, letting the whole thing, establishing a mortgage on the whole thing, giving it in pledge, establishing real servitudes, major repairs, extension, superstructure, conversion and the like
All of these require the consent of all co-owners. A 90% owner cannot mortgage the property. A majority cannot grant a right of way across it. A majority cannot let the whole of it.
If unanimity is not achieved, every co-owner has the right to ask the court to decide. Deadlock is not the end of the road; it is a route to a judge.
And a sentence that is worth more than it looks: every co-owner has the right at any time to demand that accounts be rendered and that all benefits be divided. If one co-owner has been collecting the rent, the others do not need a special reason to ask for the numbers.
The exception for emergencies
Article 137: a co-owner may, without the consent of the other co-owners, undertake works that are necessary and urgent for the maintenance or preservation of the thing.
A burst pipe does not wait for a majority by value. But note the two adjectives — necessary and urgent. A roof that has been leaking for two winters is neither.
Costs, and the sanction people do not expect
Article 139 puts the costs of use, management and maintenance, and the other burdens relating to the whole thing, on the co-owners proportionately to the size of their shares.
Then the enforcement:
If a co-owner does not pay their part of the costs, the other co-owners may demand that payment be made out of that co-owner's share of the fruits or other income of the thing, and where that is not sufficient to cover the costs, or collection would be impossible, they may demand the sale of that co-owner's share at public auction.
A co-owner who stops paying is not merely in debt to the others. Their share is exposed. For a family property where one branch has emigrated and stopped contributing, that is the provision that eventually decides it.
The right to get out — and why it cannot be signed away
Article 140 is the backbone of the whole chapter.
A co-owner has the right at any time to demand division of the thing, except at a time when that division would be to the detriment of the other co-owners, unless the law provides otherwise.
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This right does not prescribe.
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A contract by which a co-owner permanently renounces the right to division of the thing is void.
Three consequences. Nobody is locked into a co-ownership for good. Delay does not weaken the claim, however many decades have passed. And a clause in a family arrangement promising never to seek division is not merely hard to enforce — it is void.
The only qualification is timing: division may be refused at a moment when it would harm the others. That is a temporal objection, not a permanent one.
Locking it temporarily: five years, and who is bound
Co-owners may unanimously decide that division cannot be demanded for a certain time, but not longer than five years (Article 141). Unanimous, and capped.
Article 142 then answers the question that decides whether such an agreement is worth anything: it also has legal effect against a co-owner's legal successor — the person who buys or inherits the share — unless the successor became a co-owner on the basis of a transaction for value and neither knew nor could have known of the agreement.
So a buyer for value who genuinely did not know is free of it; an heir, or a buyer who did know, is not.
The same article adds a route in from outside: a co-owner's personal creditor may demand division if they could not obtain satisfaction from the co-owner's other property. The no-division agreement does not shield the share from a creditor who has run out of other assets.
How division actually happens
By agreement (Article 143). Co-owners may divide out of court. For immovable property the division contract must be in writing and certified by the competent authority or a notary.
By court (Article 144). Any co-owner may ask the court to carry out the division in non-contentious proceedings (vanparnični postupak). The co-owners decide the manner of division by agreement; if they do not agree, the court decides the manner.
From there the statute gives the court a graded toolbox.
Article 145 — the negligible share. Where division is demanded by a co-owner whose share is negligible and the other co-owners oppose division, the court may decide that the other co-owners pay out that share instead. A 2% owner cannot necessarily force a sale of the whole.
Article 146 — physical division first. The court will, whenever possible and if this would not substantially reduce the value of the thing, order physical division so that each co-owner receives in kind the part corresponding to the size or value of their share. Where the parts received do not match the shares in value, the court orders the co-owner who received more to pay the others the difference in money.
Article 148 — award to one co-owner. Where physical division is not possible or would appreciably reduce value, the court may — on the application of particular co-owners, where the circumstances justify it, and having regard to the size of the shares and the co-owners' need for the thing — decide that the thing goes to one co-owner, who pays the others the value of their shares within a period the court fixes. And then the protection that makes this workable:
The other co-owners acquire a lien over the thing until the value of their shares is paid.
Article 149 — public sale. If the court decides physical division is impossible or would substantially reduce the value, and does not award the thing to one co-owner, it orders the thing to be exposed to public sale and the proceeds divided among the co-owners proportionately to their shares.
Article 150 — costs. The costs of division are borne proportionately to shares, unless the law or the co-owners' agreement provides otherwise.
After division: three years, and what survives
Article 151. The other co-owners warrant the legal and physical defects of the thing to the co-owner who received it on division, within the limits of the value of their own shares. That right extinguishes on the expiry of three years from the division.
So a division is not a clean break on day one. For three years the others stand behind what was handed over — and after three years they do not.
Article 152. Pledges, servitudes and other real rights which burdened the undivided thing before division may be exercised as before. But: where the exercise of a real servitude relates to only one part of the thing, that right ceases as regards the remaining parts.
A mortgage over the whole does not evaporate because the co-owners divided. A right of way that only ever crossed the northern strip does not spread over the parts that were split off from it.
Before you buy into co-ownership
- Establish the share sizes by value, not the number of names. Article 134 counts value; a minority by value has no control over ordinary management, and a majority by value still cannot do anything on the Article 138 list.
- If you are buying a share, ask for evidence that the Article 132 written offer was delivered to the other co-owners and that ten days ran. That is the seller's exposure, and it becomes your problem.
- Ask whether there is a no-division agreement. If there is, check its date against the five-year cap in Article 141, and remember Article 142: as a buyer for value who now knows about it, you are bound.
- Ask for accounts. Article 138 entitles every co-owner to demand them at any time; a seller who cannot produce them is telling you something.
- Check whether any co-owner is in arrears. Article 139 exposes a defaulter's share to public auction, which changes who your future co-owners might be.
- Look at the G list for mortgages and servitudes. Under Article 152 those survive a later division.
Whose side we are on, and how we are paid
RoNa Legal DOO works for owners and buyers, not for developers, agents or sellers. We are paid by the client we act for, and by no one else in the transaction — we take no commission, referral fee or share of any contract we review.
Work that requires representation before a Montenegrin court or state authority is carried out by an advocate admitted to the Montenegrin Bar. Our own role is the preparatory and advisory layer: establishing the shares by value, checking whether the pre-emption procedure was actually followed, reading any no-division agreement against Articles 141 and 142, and preparing the file the advocate uses in the non-contentious division proceedings.
If you are already a co-owner
If you want out, the first facts are your share by value, whether any no-division agreement exists and when it was made, and whether physical division of the property is realistically possible — because that is what decides whether you are heading for Article 146, Article 148 or Article 149.
If you are the one being pushed out, the questions are whether the share demanding division is negligible within Article 145, and whether this is a moment when division would be to the detriment of the other co-owners under Article 140.
Send us the list nepokretnosti, any inheritance decision or division agreement, and a note of who has been paying what.
