Most writing about Montenegrin inheritance stops at the estate hearing: who inherits, in what shares, and what a foreign will can and cannot do. We have covered that in who inherits in Montenegro. The other half of the problem begins the day someone dies and nobody tells the building.
An inherited flat does not sit in suspension while the paperwork catches up. It has a net area, a monthly charge, a vote at the assembly, a share of the roof, and — if the pipes burst while it stands empty — a door that can be opened without anyone's consent.
You own it from the moment of death, not from the register
The Law on Inheritance is direct about this. Succession opens with death or with a declaration that a person is dead (Article 124), and the estate passes by operation of law to the heirs at the moment of death (Article 130).
Read that against the ordinary rule of Montenegrin property law, where registration creates the right, and you have the gap that defines the next several months: you are the owner, and the cadastre still says somebody else is. The register's side of that gap — what may be annotated, by which heir, and whether a share can be sold before division — is set out in the gap between owning and being registered; the buyer's mirror image sits in buying from an heir who is not yet registered.
This page is about the other institution with an opinion on your flat: the building.
The statute that runs the building never mentions death
We read the consolidated text of the Law on the Maintenance of Residential Buildings and searched it for the vocabulary of succession. The words nasljeđivanje, nasljednik, smrt — inheritance, heir, death — appear zero times in its body.
There is no special regime for an estate, no grace period while probate runs, no provision suspending a flat's obligations because its owner died. Instead there are rules written for living owners, and heirs fall into them from the moment of death whether or not anyone has told the manager. Three of them do real work.
Co-heirs are one vote, and appointing the voice is compulsory
Until the estate is divided, co-heirs administer and dispose of the inheritance jointly (Law on Inheritance, Article 143(1)). In the vocabulary of the building statute that makes them zajedničari — joint holders of one special part — and Article 6 addresses the case squarely.
Every unit owner has one vote (Article 6(1)). Where one special part has several co-owners or joint holders, all of them together have one vote (Article 6(4)). And they are not left to arrange this informally: they are obliged to authorise a representative and deliver the power of attorney in writing to the president of the assembly (Article 6(5)).
Three siblings who inherit a flat in Budva do not get three votes, and cannot simply send whoever is in the country that week. They get one vote and a written mandate — and the statute treats the absence of that mandate as a breach:
- the communal inspector must check whether joint holders have authorised a representative and delivered the power of attorney in writing (Article 34(4));
- the same inspector must order them to do so where they have not (Article 36(4));
- and the failure is listed among the offences in Article 37, at €30 to €2,000 for a natural person (Article 37(3)), €500 to €10,000 where the owner is a legal person (Article 37(1)).
Note which official this is: the layer that reaches co-heirs is the communal inspector, not the housing inspector of who gets fined when nothing is repaired. Heirs who cannot agree on a spokesperson are therefore not merely voteless while they argue — they are in breach of a duty an inspector must order them to perform, while the assembly keeps deciding on the arithmetic in how decisions get made.
The three-month clock the manager does not control
The monthly advance runs at 1 point per m² of net residential or business area and 0.5 points per m² of the listed non-residential space (Article 16(2)); the assembly fixes the point, which may not be less than €0.20 (Article 16(3)). The mechanics sit in the point and the account. Two further paragraphs matter to an estate:
- Article 16(8): the invoice for maintenance funds owed by the owner or user is an enforceable instrument in enforcement proceedings. No lawsuit, no judgment, no hearing on the merits — the invoice is the title.
- Article 16(10): where an owner fails to pay for more than three months, the manager is obliged to commence enforcement on that instrument within eight days of the period expiring.
That is a duty, not a discretion. A sympathetic manager who knows the owner has died and the family is abroad is not authorised to wait for the estate hearing. A second enforceable invoice arrives by another route: where the manager and assembly fail to secure urgent works, the municipality must secure them at the building's expense, and that invoice is enforceable too (Article 15(1)–(3)).
Three months is short measured against an estate that has to locate heirs abroad, obtain foreign documents and reach a hearing. Nothing in either statute lengthens it.
Which arrears are the deceased's, and which are yours
The dividing line is the moment of death.
Charges accrued before the death are debts of the deceased. An heir answers for those only up to the value of the inherited property (Article 140(1)); an heir who has renounced answers for nothing (Article 140(3)); and several heirs are jointly and severally liable, each up to the value of their own share, whether or not the estate has been divided (Article 140(4)).
Charges accruing after the death are not the deceased's debts at all. You became the owner at that moment and the obligation attaches to the owner, so the liability cap does not reach them.
One provision favours a building that is owed money: the deceased's creditors may, within three months of the opening of succession, demand that the estate be separated from the heir's own property, after which the separating creditors are paid from the estate alone (Article 141).
Paying the charge does not mean you have accepted the inheritance
This is the question foreign heirs ask most often, and the answer is more comfortable than they expect.
An heir may renounce by declaration to the court until the conclusion of the estate hearing (Article 131) — a stage in the procedure, not a fixed number of days from the death. What forfeits the right is disposal (Article 133(1)). But the same article continues, and the continuation is the point: measures taken merely to preserve the estate, and measures of current administration, do not deprive an heir of the right to renounce (Article 133(2)).
Keeping the building's monthly charge paid while you decide is, on its face, preservation and current administration — not a disposal. Selling the flat is a different act with a different consequence. If the estate may be insolvent and renunciation is genuinely on the table, take advice on that distinction before you act; but the fear that one transfer to the building's account silently commits you to the whole estate is not what the statute says.
The empty flat, and the door that opens without you
Urgent works are defined by purpose and by a closed list, from gas and water installations to the roof, the façade and the building's static stability (Article 12(1)); the mechanism is set out in urgent works: who decides, who pays. Two paragraphs of it reach an empty flat directly: the manager must secure urgent works inside a special part where the owner does not and it is necessary for the building as a whole (Article 12(3)), and that owner must then reimburse the joint account (Article 12(4)).
Then Article 15(4)–(5). Every owner must allow such works and allow authorised persons access; and where necessary or urgent works are needed, the owner is not in the special part and their whereabouts are unknown, entry may be made without consent — on the order of the housing inspector, or of the local authority through the communal inspector — where that is necessary to save people and property.
A deceased owner, heirs abroad and a manager holding no current contact details describe that paragraph almost exactly. The only variable the heirs control is whether anyone in the building knows who they are.
Telling the building is a duty, and it is also self-protection
Article 23(1) requires owners to report to the assembly and the manager every change relating to the disposal of the special part, and the manager must notify the local authority (Article 23(2)); failure is on the communal inspector's list of orders and among the offences in Article 37. The provision is drafted for a living owner making a change, which is precisely why heirs should not wait to be asked. Two mechanics make the point concrete:
- Under Article 20 the local authority determines, ex officio and by decision, the amount and manner of paying maintenance costs; the decision names the unit owner and is itself an enforceable instrument. An enforcement title is only as good as the name on it — and the name in the records will be the one nobody has corrected.
- Under Article 17(2), an owner who has disposed of their special part has no right to demand the return of funds from the joint account. Whatever the deceased contributed stays with the building; it is not an estate asset.
When the heirs cannot agree, and when the building has no manager
Two deadlocks can run at once, and each statute solves its own.
On the estate side, if there is no executor and the heirs cannot agree, the court will, at the request of any one of them, appoint an administrator to act for all (Article 143(2)–(3)). That administrator may, with the court's approval, dispose of estate assets where necessary to pay costs or avert damage (Article 143(4)) — language that reaches an emergency in the building. Any heir may also demand division at any time; the right does not prescribe (Article 142).
On the building's side, where owners have not formed management organs the local authority must appoint a temporary manager for up to three months, the fee charged to the maintenance funds (Article 22); that manager convenes a constitutive assembly within 15 days, and if there is still no quorum on the second call decisions are taken by a majority of those present (Article 22a). More in the upravnik.
Note the asymmetry: a family that stays away is not protected by its absence. The building can be run, and the point set, by whoever turns up.
| Moment | What the building's statute does | Where it says so |
|---|---|---|
| The owner dies | Nothing. No rule on death, inheritance or heirs anywhere in it | Law on Maintenance, whole text |
| From the moment of death | The heirs are the owners, jointly until division | Inheritance Act Articles 130, 143 |
| The assembly meets | The flat has one vote; co-heirs must appoint a representative in writing | Maintenance Act Article 6(4)-(5) |
| No representative appointed | Communal inspector checks it, must order it, and it is a listed offence | Articles 34(4), 36(4), 37 |
| Three months of arrears | The manager must start enforcement within eight days, on the invoice itself | Article 16(8), (10) |
| Urgent works, nobody reachable | Entry without consent, on an inspector's order | Article 15(5) |
| The flat is sold | No refund of the building's fund to the departing owner | Article 17(2) |
What to do about it, in order
- Tell the manager in writing that the owner has died, with a contact address for the heirs. Nothing makes this automatic, and every clock above runs better once someone can reach you.
- Keep the monthly charge paid while the estate runs, unless renunciation is genuinely under consideration — in which case take advice on Article 133 first.
- Agree one representative in writing and deliver the mandate to the president of the assembly. It is a duty, it costs nothing, and it restores the flat's vote.
- Ask the manager for the account, split into amounts falling due before and after the date of death — two different debts, two different rules.
- If the heirs are deadlocked, one of you can apply to the court for an administrator under Article 143 rather than waiting for unanimity that is not coming.
Whose side we are on, and how we are paid
The people around a property are mostly paid by the transaction. An agent's commission depends on a sale closing. A developer's sales team works for the developer. A building manager is engaged by the assembly, not by you individually — and in an estate, the manager's statutory duty at three months runs against the flat, not for it.
We take no commission from sellers, developers, agents or intermediaries — not in any form and not on any file. Our only income is the fee you pay us, and it does not increase if you sign. Telling you not to proceed costs us nothing.
In practice that means we obtain the building's account and the register extract ourselves rather than accepting a summary, we read the estate and the building as two separate files because the statutes treat them separately, and we put "this should not proceed" in writing when that is the answer. Where a matter requires representation before a Montenegrin court or authority, that work is carried out by an advocate admitted to the Montenegrin Bar, with whom we work on the file.
One boundary, and it is not negotiable: we are lawyers, not licensed investment advisers. We do not give personal advice on financial instruments and we do not tell you whether an asset will make money. What we protect is your legal position — title, contract, registration, status, and the deadlines that decide all four.
Before the estate hearing closes
Send us the death certificate, whatever the family has about the flat, and the last thing the building sent to the deceased's address. We will tell you which clocks are already running, what the flat owes on each side of the date of death, and what has to be filed before the hearing concludes. If someone has already received an enforcement document, say so in the first line.
Statutory provisions are stated as at September 2026 and were read from the consolidated text of the Law on the Maintenance of Residential Buildings, Official Gazette of Montenegro 41/2016, 84/2018, 111/2022 (Constitutional Court decision U-I no. 40/20 of 28 July 2022), 140/2022 and 84/2024, and from the Law on Inheritance, Official Gazette of Montenegro 74/2008 and 75/2017 (Constitutional Court decision U-I no. 22/14 of 20 September 2017). A draft of a new act on the management and maintenance of residential buildings is in preparation and is not law. This page is general information on a statutory regime, not advice on a specific estate.
