A false claim about your rental business spreads across a review platform. A neighbour blocks your access and calls at midnight for a month. A developer publishes your correspondence to pressure you into signing. A family member is killed in an accident on a site you had no control over.
None of those losses shows up on an invoice, and all of them are actionable in Montenegro. The Law on Obligations (Zakon o obligacionim odnosima, "Official Gazette of Montenegro" nos. 47/08, 4/11, 22/17 and 123/24; consolidated text read 30 August 2026) treats them as a category of its own: non-pecuniary damage, arising from the violation of personality rights.
It is not a smaller version of a money claim. It runs on a different list of protected interests, a different set of remedies, a different rule on when the debt falls due, and a different rule on whether it survives to your heirs. This page sets out those differences. It does not set out amounts — the statute prescribes no tariff, and the reason is itself one of the rules below.
Where it sits, and why it is separate
Art. 149 defines damage in three heads: reduction of property, prevention of its increase, and violation of personality rights. The first two are material damage, governed by arts. 196 to 199 and covered in our guide to claiming damages in Montenegro. The third is governed by arts. 206 to 212, and the rules there do not simply borrow from the material side.
Four of them diverge in ways that change what you should do first.
| Question | Material damage | Non-pecuniary damage |
|---|---|---|
| When does the debt fall due | Art. 193 — from the moment the damage arose | Art. 210d — from the day the written request or the claim is filed, unless the damage arose later |
| Does the claim pass to heirs | Ordinary rules; the annuity heads are restricted by art. 204 | Art. 211(1) — only if recognised by a final decision or a written agreement |
| Can it be assigned, set off or enforced against | Ordinary rules | Art. 211(2) — only on the same condition as inheritance |
| How is the amount fixed | Art. 196(2) — by prices at the date of the court decision | Art. 210a(2) — by a list of case factors; no tariff, no price reference |
The first row costs money in practice. For material damage the interest clock starts when the loss happens; for non-pecuniary damage it starts when you put the demand in writing. A year of telephone complaints earns nothing — the written request is the event.
The second row costs cases. A non-pecuniary claim not reduced to a final judgment or a written settlement does not pass to the heirs at all. Where an elderly or seriously ill claimant is involved, that timing is not administrative.
Which rights are actually protected
Art. 207 enumerates them, and the list is broader than most foreign readers assume:
- the right to life, to physical (bodily) integrity, and to psychological (mental) integrity;
- the right to liberty;
- the right to honour and the right to reputation;
- the right to protection of private life, and to dignity;
- the right to one's own image and one's own voice;
- the right to correspondence and personal records;
- the right to personal identity;
- the moral component of copyright;
- and any other personality rights laid down by the Constitution, by ratified and published international treaties, by generally accepted rules of international law, and by special laws.
Two structural rules sit on top. Art. 208 makes personality rights inalienable — nobody can waive them or restrict them contrary to law, public order or morals, so a clause in a settlement or a supplier contract purporting to sign them away does not do so. And art. 206(3) declares the protection given by this law a minimum that a special law cannot limit. A special regime may add to it; it may not cut it back.
Art. 209(2) supplies the test: a violation is unlawful where the restriction of those rights is not based on a statute.
Can a company claim?
Yes, within a boundary the statute draws explicitly. Art. 206(1) gives a natural person full protection of their personality. Art. 206(2) gives a legal person protection of those personality rights that do not arise from the natural attributes of a human being.
So a Montenegrin company can pursue the reputation and honour limbs, the private-sphere and correspondence limbs, and identity — but not the ones that presuppose a body or a mind. For a foreign investor operating through a local company, that is the practical answer to whether the entity or the individual should be the claimant: often both, on different limbs of art. 207, and the pleading should say which.
What a court can order besides money
This is the part that is routinely missed, and for a live and continuing harm it matters more than the award.
Art. 209(3) gives everyone the right to ask a court or other competent authority to order the cessation of a violation of their personality rights. Art. 151(1) then sets out the full civil menu, and it is a menu rather than a single remedy:
- prohibition of an unlawful violation that is imminent;
- a declaration that the violation was unlawful;
- an order to stop a violation that is ongoing;
- an order to abstain from future violations, or to remove the consequences of those already committed;
- compensation for material and non-material damage;
- and other legal means and measures capable of protecting personality rights.
Art. 151(2) adds a publication remedy: you may specifically seek publication of certain information, or its delivery to specified persons or bodies, as well as publication of a correction of published information or of the court's or authority's decision.
For coercion and abuse there is a dedicated provision. Art. 210(1) lets the injured party ask the court to prohibit the wrongdoer, under threat of a monetary penalty, from specified conduct — naming entry into a particular space and harassment of the injured party by telephone, electronic means, letter or otherwise. Art. 210(2) goes further where the parties share a flat or family house: a ban on all contact, and, on a repeated gross violation, an order that the wrongdoer move out.
Interim relief is available before all that is resolved. Art. 151a(1) allows appropriate interim measures against a named person in cases of coercion, threat, or any form of abuse or harassment. Art. 151a(2) lets them be lifted on grounds of fairness, and art. 151a(3) makes the applicant liable for damage caused where it is obvious the measures were obtained by abusing the right to protection — the discipline that keeps the remedy from being a tactic.
The money award, and why there is no tariff
Art. 210a(1) is the operative rule: in the case of a violation of personality rights the court shall award fair monetary compensation according to the gravity of the violation and the circumstances of the case — independently of compensation for material damage, and also in the absence of any material damage. You do not need an underlying financial loss to have a claim.
Art. 210a(2) then tells the court what to weigh, and the breadth of the list is the reason no tariff exists. The court takes account of all the circumstances, and in particular:
- the type of the violation, the manner in which it was inflicted, and its lasting consequences;
- the claimant's age, occupation and general personal situation;
- whether the parties are insured;
- the economic situation of both the wrongdoer and the injured party;
- the duration of any unfounded deprivation of liberty;
- the purpose the monetary compensation serves;
- and expressly, that the award must not encourage aims incompatible with its nature and social purpose.
That last clause is a statutory brake on treating the head as a windfall, and it is why we do not publish indicative figures for Montenegro: the statute fixes factors, not amounts, so a number produced without the case file is not a prediction.
Two extensions are worth knowing. Art. 210g(1) allows an award for future non-pecuniary damage where it is certain in the ordinary course that the harm will continue, and art. 210g(2) allows that award as an annuity where this better achieves the purpose of the compensation. And art. 210v creates a distinct entitlement to fair monetary compensation for mental anguish for a person led into a punishable sexual act by deception, coercion or abuse of a relationship of subordination or dependence, and for the victim of other offences against sexual freedom.
Who in the family can claim on a death or grave disability
Art. 210b answers this precisely, and the circle is wider than the household. Note the modal: art. 210a(1) says the court shall award compensation to the person whose rights were violated, while art. 210b says it may award it to these relatives.
| Who | On what event | Condition | Article |
|---|---|---|---|
| Spouse or same-sex life partner, children, adoptive parents, parents, adoptees | Death | none beyond the relationship | 210b(1) |
| Siblings | Death | a more lasting community of life with the deceased | 210b(2) |
| The same immediate-family circle | Particularly grave disability | none beyond the relationship | 210b(3) |
| Unmarried partner | Death or injury | community of life of at least three years, or a common child, or continued into marriage | 210b(4) |
| Parents | Loss of a conceived but unborn child | caused by violation of personality rights | 210b(5) |
Whom you sue when several people are involved
Art. 209(1) gives the injured party protection against every person who participated in the unlawful violation. That is the starting point for a harm that was amplified rather than merely originated.
Art. 213(1) makes all participants jointly and severally liable for damage caused together, and art. 213(2) extends that expressly to the instigator and the abettor, and to anyone who helped the responsible persons avoid discovery. Where several people acted independently and their shares cannot be established, art. 213(3) makes them jointly and severally liable as well. Between themselves, art. 215(2) apportions by the gravity of each one's fault and of the consequences flowing from their conduct, with art. 215(3) splitting equally where shares cannot be determined unless fairness requires otherwise.
Art. 212 confirms that the material-damage rules on shared responsibility and reduction of the award apply, as appropriate, to non-pecuniary damage too — so a claimant's own contribution reduces the award here on the same logic.
Deadlines, and the route that survives them
The limitation rules in art. 385 apply to this head as they do to material damage: three years from the day the injured party learned of both the damage and the person who caused it (385(1)), and in any event five years from when the damage arose (385(2)).
One provision then softens the cliff, and it is easy to miss because it sits at the end of the chapter. Art. 216: after the right to claim compensation has become time-barred, the injured party may still require the responsible person, under the rules on unjust enrichment, to hand over what he obtained by the act that caused the damage. Where the wrongdoer profited from the violation — the classic case being a commercial use of someone's image, voice or identity — the expiry of the damages claim is not necessarily the end of the file.
Is it also a crime?
Generally no, and this surprises people who arrive expecting a criminal complaint to do the work.
Insult (art. 195) and defamation (art. 196) were deleted from the Criminal Code by the Law on Amendments to the Criminal Code, "Official Gazette of Montenegro" no. 32/11. The consolidated Criminal Code carries both articles as Briše se — deleted. Montenegro decriminalised them; the civil claim under the Law on Obligations is the route.
One related offence survives: art. 197, disclosing personal or family circumstances capable of harming another's honour or reputation, with an aggravated form where it is committed through the media or at a public gathering. It carries a defence in art. 197(4) for disclosure made in the exercise of official duty, of the journalistic profession, in the defence of a right or in the protection of justified interests, where the person proves the truth of the statement or reasonable grounds for believing it true — and art. 197(5) otherwise bars proving truth or falsity at all.
We are not quoting the penalty figures. The consolidated Criminal Code we read runs to "Official Gazette of Montenegro" no. 003/20, and that is not the last layer: at least five later amending laws exist — 144/2021 and 145/2021 (both 31 December 2021), 110/2023, 123/2024 and 121/2025 (in force 22 October 2025) — whose consolidated text is behind the gazette paywall. The deletion of arts. 195 and 196 is recorded in the text itself with its own gazette citation and is safe to rely on; a euro amount from an unverified layer is not.
Before you send anything
Two dates decide more of a non-pecuniary claim than the merits do: the day you put the demand in writing, because art. 210d starts the debt there, and the day a claim is either reduced to judgment or settled in writing, because art. 211 is what allows it to pass to anyone else.
If something is being said, published or done to you or your company in Montenegro, send us the material, the dates and the correspondence before you reply to it publicly or accept a settlement — the reply is often what fixes the record you will later need. Our work on compensation claims starts by separating the limbs of art. 207 in play and deciding whether the individual, the company, or both are the right claimant. Related reading: claiming damages in Montenegro for the material head and the burden of proof, the criminal layer of real estate fraud where the conduct crosses into an offence, and enforcement and insolvency for collecting an award once you hold one.
