Owners' Meeting Instructions Binding on the Manager

The owners' meeting instructions are binding on the manager. As a mandatary, the manager must keep within the limits set by the mandate and follow the directions of the principal, that is the owners' meeting, under Article 1711 of the Italian Civil Code. Executing resolutions is, after all, one of the manager's core duties, listed among the powers in Article 1130. The manager is not an autonomous decision-maker on matters reserved to the meeting: the manager is the one who turns the choices lawfully made by the community into concrete acts.

The statutory basis of the binding effect

Article 1711 provides that the mandatary may not exceed the limits set in the mandate. Applied to a condominium, this means the manager must operate within the scope of ordinary administration powers and specific meeting decisions. Article 1130 assigns the manager, among other things, the task of executing the meeting's resolutions, ensuring compliance with the regulation and collecting contributions. A duly approved resolution is therefore a service order that the manager must carry out.

What actually binds

Not every instruction received carries the same weight. What binds the manager are resolutions validly adopted with the majorities required by law, the condominium regulation and mandatory legal provisions. A wish expressed by individual owners outside the meeting, by contrast, is not a binding instruction. The distinction is essential: the manager answers for what the collective body decided, not for individual opinions.

• Resolutions approved with the quorums set by Article 1136
• The clauses of the condominium regulation
• Legal duties, which prevail even over a resolution to the contrary
• The spending limits and directions set in the approved budget

When the manager may depart from instructions

The binding effect is not absolute. Article 1711, second paragraph, allows the mandatary to depart from instructions when circumstances unknown to the principal, which cannot be communicated in time, reasonably suggest that the principal would have given approval. In a condominium this margin finds its typical expression in urgent works: faced with imminent danger to safety, the manager may and must act even without a prior resolution, then report and submit the expense for ratification by the meeting.

The limit of urgency and necessity

The power to depart from instructions must be used with caution and remains an exception. It must involve genuinely unforeseeable situations that cannot be postponed, where waiting for the meeting to be convened would cause greater harm. A manager who invokes urgency to bypass the meeting's will, or to justify discretionary choices that could have waited, is exposed to challenge. The dividing line runs through reasonableness: the departure must be the one the meeting itself would likely have approved.

Consequences of failing to follow instructions

A manager who fails to execute a valid resolution, or who acts against the instructions received, is in breach of the mandate. The consequences can be serious: liability for damage caused to the condominium, the duty to personally bear expenses incurred outside the mandate if the meeting does not ratify them, and in the most serious cases the revocation of the appointment, including by court order, where the failure amounts to a serious irregularity in management.

And if the resolution is unlawful

A delicate case concerns a resolution that appears contrary to law. The manager has no power to review the merits of the meeting's decisions, but must not execute resolutions that are void or manifestly unlawful, since the manager would answer for them. Prudence suggests reporting doubts about legality to the meeting in writing, requesting a review and, if necessary, prompting a challenge by the owners entitled to bring it, without arbitrarily substituting for the deliberating body.

Executing instructions correctly requires tracking what was resolved and what was done. With AmministraPro resolutions, obligations and expenses stay linked and verifiable, so the manager can show they gave effect to the meeting's will within the limits of the mandate. The features are described at /funzioni and the plans at /prezzi.