Many people think that when a house is in a condominium situation, every co-owner would have the rights, obligations and liabilities in the same proportion the property is owned by all of them.

Nevertheless, the legal situation is not that way and we have to distinguish two very common situations:

a) Payment of the community fees. Regarding the community fees to be paid to the community, many people tend to think that the co-owners will only be obliged to pay according to the share they have got in the property, so the community would have to claim the community fees to all the co-owners in their proportional part in the property.

This is wrong, because the community is able to claim the total amount of the community fees to any of the owners and the one who ends up paying for a higher amount that would be proportional to his share would be entitle to claim the excess to the rest of the co-owners who has not been claimed by the community.

Taking this into consideration, the community will sue the co-owner who is more solvent and has more properties or assets to make and embargo on, no matter what this co-owners could later claim to their partner in the property. It does not matter for the community the agreement between co-owners to pay the community fees, because the community will be always entitle to claim the full community fees to the co-owner the community chooses.

This is specially important in the matrimonial agreements taken by the spouses with the divorce because even when they have agreed that the community fees have to paid by any of the spouses, the community could claim the fees from both of them.

 b) Right to vote in the general assembly. Another common misunderstanding is to consider that the vote of the co-owners would be divided among them, so all of the co-owners could vote according to their share in the property. The Horizontal property Law establishes in the article 15.1 that “ if a property belong to more than one person ( condominium or pro indiviso) they will have to name a represent to assist to the meeting and vote on behalf of all of them” This means that the vote would be only one, and the co-owners would have to decide by majority, who they want to be the representative for all of them in the meeting. There are not as many proportional votes as co-owners could be in a property.