Almost every foreign owner of a Montenegrin asset has given a power of attorney to somebody. It is the normal way the system works — you cannot be in Podgorica for every signature, the electronic route still does not accept a foreign qualified certificate, so a punomoćje goes out and a local person acts.
Most of those documents are signed quickly, drafted broadly, and never thought about again. Then something changes: the relationship sours, the project ends, the agent stops answering. The question becomes how to get the authority back, and how fast.
Two provisions answer it, and they point in opposite directions.
Sources, checked on 20 September 2026: Zakon o obligacionim odnosima, consolidated text published under the EU Rule of Law support programme (EUROL 4), last verified 15 January 2026 — Articles 85, 86, 87, 88, 89, 90, 91 and 92. That consolidation is expressly informative rather than official, so the article numbers and architecture below should be checked against the Gazette before they are relied on in a filed document. Zakon o međunarodnom privatnom pravu ("Sl. list CG" 1/2014 and corrections) — Articles 23, 24 and 45. This page states Montenegrin law.
What a power of attorney actually is here
Article 85(1) defines it plainly: a power of attorney is authority to represent, given by the principal to the attorney by legal transaction. Article 85(3) allows the attorney to be a legal person — a firm, not only an individual.
Article 85(2) is the provision that explains most disputes. The existence and scope of the power of attorney are independent of the legal relationship on the basis of which it was given. The mandate agreement between you and your agent is one thing; the authority the outside world sees is another. Terminating the first does not, by itself, do anything to the second.
The scope you gave is narrower than you think — and wider
Article 87(1) confines the attorney to the acts they are authorised to do. Then two limits that cut in opposite directions.
Article 87(2): an attorney holding a general power of attorney may undertake only legal transactions falling within ordinary business. Article 87(3): anything outside ordinary business requires special authority for that act or that class of acts. So the sweeping "to do everything on my behalf" document does less than its language suggests — buying or selling land is not ordinary business, and a general power does not reach it.
Article 87(4) goes further. Without special authority for each individual case, an attorney may not:
- assume a bill-of-exchange obligation;
- conclude a contract of suretyship;
- conclude a settlement;
- conclude an arbitration agreement;
- waive any right without consideration.
Each individual case. Not each class. A standing authority to settle, or to waive, does not satisfy Article 87(4).
Article 91 runs the same logic for a commercial power of attorney given by a company for its usual business: under Article 91(2) the commercial attorney may not alienate or encumber immovables, assume bill or suretyship obligations, take a loan, or conduct litigation without a special power of attorney for each such act. Article 91(3) adds that limitations on a commercial power of attorney bind a third party only where that party knew or ought to have known of them — the same knowledge test that runs through this whole area. Where the question is who can bind the company in the first place, representation limits for a Montenegrin company sets out the corporate side.
Article 88: the irrevocable power of attorney is a contradiction
This is the provision that surprises people who brought their document from another legal system.
Article 88(1): The principal may, at their own will, narrow or revoke the power of attorney, even if by contract they have renounced that right.
There is no irrevocable power of attorney in Montenegrin law. A clause saying the authority is irrevocable, or coupled with an interest, or granted as security, does not prevent revocation. You can always take it back.
Article 88(2) removes the second obstacle people expect: revocation or narrowing may be done by a statement without any special form. No notary, no particular wording, no prescribed document.
Article 88(3) supplies the counterweight. If the revocation or narrowing breaches a mandate agreement, a contract for work, or another contract, the attorney is entitled to damages for the loss caused. So the authority always comes back; the contractual consequences of taking it back are a separate bill.
That is a genuinely useful combination. An owner who wants the authority ended tonight can end it tonight, and argue about the mandate afterwards — rather than the other way around.
Article 89: and this is where the money is lost
Revocation is easy. Making it effective against the world is not.
Article 89(1): Revocation of a power of attorney, as well as its narrowing, has no effect against a third party who concluded a contract with the attorney, or undertook another legal transaction, and neither knew nor ought to have known that the power of attorney had been revoked or narrowed.
Read that against Article 88(2). The law requires no form for the revocation and creates no register where it could be found. The consequence is that the revocation binds only those who know about it — and proving what a third party "ought to have known" is entirely a question of what notice you can show you gave.
Article 89(2) then allocates the loss: in that situation the principal may claim damages from the attorney, except where the attorney also neither knew nor ought to have known of the revocation. Which is to say, your remedy is against the person who has just cost you the asset — a remedy that is only as good as they are.
Article 89(3) extends both paragraphs to the other ways a power of attorney ends.
| Provision | Effect |
|---|---|
| Art. 88(1) | Revoke at will, even against a contractual waiver |
| Art. 88(2) | No special form required for the revocation |
| Art. 88(3) | Attorney may claim damages if revocation breaches a contract |
| Art. 89(1) | No effect on a third party who did not know and need not have known |
| Art. 89(2) | Principal's remedy is damages against the attorney |
| Art. 90(2) | Ends on the attorney's death |
| Art. 90(3) | Ends on the principal's death — with two exceptions |
Death does not always end it
Article 90 sets out the other terminations, and paragraph 3 is not what most people assume.
A power of attorney ends on the dissolution of the legal person, or the death of the person who gave it — except where the business already commenced cannot be interrupted without harm to the legal successors, or where the power of attorney is valid for the case of death, either by the giver's will or by the nature of the business.
Two exceptions, and the second is not drafted by you. "By the nature of the business" is a judgment applied after the fact to the transaction that was under way. An estate that assumed the agent's authority died with the deceased can find that a transaction completed afterwards stands.
Article 90(1) and (2) are cleaner: the power ends when the attorney, being a legal person, ceases to exist, and it ends on the attorney's death.
The cross-border layer, in three separate questions
Foreign owners repeatedly treat this as one question. It is three, and they are governed by different rules.
- The form of the power of attorney — Private International Law Act Article 23 gives an alternative connection: the form is valid if it satisfies either the law of the place where it was executed or the law applicable to the substance. A notary public abroad certifying a signature can therefore be enough as a matter of form.
- The existence and scope of the authority — Article 24(3): where the subject of the representation is a right in immovable property, the law of the state where the property is located applies. That is Montenegrin law, which means Article 87(2) and (3) decide what a general power actually reaches.
- The form of the sale contract itself — Article 45(5) applies the law of the place where the immovable is located, mandatorily. That is the notarial route, and it never bends.
Article 86 of the Obligations Act completes the picture for a power of attorney given in Montenegro: the form prescribed by law for a contract applies also to the power of attorney for concluding it. For a cross-border power of attorney, Article 23 of the Private International Law Act supplies the alternative.
What we actually do when a client wants a power of attorney killed
Because Article 88(2) requires no form and Article 89(1) turns on knowledge, the work is not drafting. It is service and evidence.
- A dated, signed revocation delivered to the attorney by a method that produces proof of receipt.
- Written notice to every counterparty the attorney has been dealing with, and to the notary who holds the file.
- Written notice to the bank, the registry, the cadastre office and any agent involved in a live transaction.
- Retrieval of the original instrument where possible, because a document physically in someone's hand is what a third party relies on.
- A note on file of what was sent, to whom, and when — since that file is the evidence of what a third party ought to have known.
None of this is glamorous and all of it is the case. Where a company's own record is part of the picture, the company register page explains where that record now sits.
What this page does not decide
Whether the agent's conduct amounts to a criminal offence, and whether the underlying mandate entitles them to a fee or entitles you to damages, are separate questions on separate facts. Nor does this page address the specific position of a power of attorney granted as part of a security package, which turns on what the security document says and on how Montenegrin law characterises it.
Who we act for
We act for one side and we say which. In a dispute about a power of attorney the principal and the attorney have opposed interests from the first letter, and we will not act for both. Fees are fixed and published, and a first consultation is charged and credited against the engagement if it proceeds.
If you think a power of attorney is being used against you
Send the instrument itself, the mandate or engagement letter behind it, and a list of every transaction you believe has been done under it with dates. We come back with a written note: what Articles 87 and 91 actually authorised, whether anything done exceeded it, exactly who has to be notified for Article 89 to bite, and what the realistic recovery route is against the attorney under Article 89(2).
