The condominium owner on the ground floor pays for the lift if he accesses the roof terrace
The distribution of costs is the same as for stairs, so he pays less, but is obliged to contribute to the potential utilisation
Key points
The owners of the ground floor premises that have access to the top-floor condominium terrace and the common parts also participate in the division of elevator expenses. This is the principle expressed by judgement 31675/2025, filed on 4 December.
The correct allocation criteria
The courts of legitimacy were approached by a condominium building against the action brought by some owners of a building who contested the resolution that had divided the expenses for the replacement of four lifts of the building in proportion to the position of the value of their respective owner shares, i.e. with reference to the height position of the floor, excluding the owners of stairwells and commercial premises.
The resolution in the first and second instance was held to be voidable precisely because of the erroneous allocation criteria: Article 1124(1) of the Civil Code, which provides for the maintenance and reconstruction of staircases, was applicable to the case at hand, and according to which the costs are divided in half according to the value of the individual floors or portions thereof, and in half proportion to the height of each floor above ground. In practice, the error had been not to consider that all owners of business premises and premises located in the basement have potential use of the stairs as well as of the lifts leading to the condominium terrace.
Payment according to use
The losing condominium turned to the Court of Cassation and explained that it had applied the regulation according to which the costs were to be divided according to the use of the property, thus excluding the owners of the ground floor who had no interest in accessing the condominium terrace (normally used as a drying room/solarium). According to the condominium, the courts could not enter into the merits of the decisions that the assembly had included in the regulations.
The Supreme Court starts from this point and states that not only an agreement that allocates expenses among the owners in a different measure from the legal one, but also one that provides for the total or partial exemption of some of the owners from the obligation to participate in those expenses, must be considered legitimate. This decision, however, that contravenes the rule must either be contained in a contractual regulation (transcribed in the deeds of purchase of the individual owners' homes) or in a resolution passed unanimously.
