Question: I made an error paying my levies and was declared unfinancial at the meeting. Was I financial? Was the body corporate manager obliged to tell me about the shortfall?
Our AGM was held on Zoom. When I joined, I was told I was unfinancial. A week earlier, I made a typo when paying my levy, leaving a shortfall of around $200.
The chairperson, who was also the body corporate manager, said that if I paid “now” I would be financial. They directed someone in their office to send me the levy notice. It arrived within seconds.
The Body Corporate and Community Management (Standard Module) Regulation 2020 states that a levy can be paid “at the time of the meeting”, so I believed I was financial.
My vote was not counted. If it had been, my motion would have passed. Was I financial? And why didn’t the body corporate manager notify me of the shortfall before the meeting?
Answer: The responsibility for paying levies and remaining financial rests with the owner, not the body corporate manager.
The responsibility for paying levies and being financial rests with the owner. If there’s an outright error (e.g., keying error with email, notice not sent to the right address for service on the roll), that’s possibly a different story. In this instance, we’re (very) doubtful there’s an obligation on the body corporate manager to inform you of an outstanding amount. Especially because, by your own admission, you made the error in the first instance.
That’s not to say you don’t have an issue here. Ultimately, it would be up to an adjudicator in the Commissioner’s Office to determine whether you were financial and whether the appropriate steps had been taken (and whether the body corporate had acted reasonably throughout). Your comments about the manager leaving the meeting to issue you with the notice aren’t entirely clear in this regard: we’re not sure what difference it makes whether they told you what they were doing, while the ‘attend’ issue is also unclear and might be subject to interpretation. We also assume that, on receipt of the invoice for the (apparently) outstanding amount, you did not immediately pay same.
What is apparent here is that the vote was close, and as you say, had you been financial, things may have been different. Adjudicators will tend to look more closely at situations where the numbers are tight and the vote is close. It would be a different story if the vote was, say, 10 – nil. So ultimately, you’d need to decide how much time, effort, resilience, and, yes, money you’d be prepared to spend disputing this issue. The obvious starting point is the importance of the motion you’re referring to. You might also like to consider seeking some specialised advice about this issue, and investigate previous adjudicators’ orders to see how similar issues have been treated in the past.
This is general information only and not legal advice.
This post appears in the June 2026 edition of The QLD Strata Magazine.
Chris Irons Strata Solve E: chris@stratasolve.com.au P: 0419 805 898
