Strata Law – are you paying the correct filing fees?
Strata Managers and Owners Corporations – are you paying the correct court filing fees when you have to issue legal proceedings to recover overdue contributions from your owners?
This office has recently seen multiple examples of Statements of Claim issued by legal representatives on behalf of owners corporations whereby the owners corporation has paid the incorrect filing fee when the document has been filed and issued by the NSW Local Court.
This has resulted in owners corporations paying double the amount that they should be paying.
Section 8(1) of the Strata Schemes Management Act NSW 2015 provides that the owners of the lots in a strata scheme constitute a body corporate with the following legal name – “The Owners – Strata Plan X” (X being the registered number of the strata plan to which the strata scheme relates).
However, Section 8(2) of the Strata Schemes Management Act NSW 2015 provides that an owners corporation is declared to be an excluded matter for the purposes of section 5F of the Corporations Act Cth 2001 in relation to the whole of the Corporations Act legislation.
In layman’s terms, the above provisions mean that a body corporate or owners corporation is not considered to be a corporate entity when issuing legal proceedings. It is considered to be a group of owners that are individuals and therefore the court filing fees for individual plaintiffs apply rather than the filing fees for corporate plaintiffs.
The difference in the filing fees as of 1 July 2021 is highlighted in the table below:
| Claim amount | Individual Fee | Corporate Fee |
| Claims under $1,000 | $106 | $212 |
| $1,000 to $4,999 | $106 | $212 |
| $5,000 to $19,999 | $106 | $212 |
| $20,000 to $99,999 | $259 | $518 |
The issue of costs
The above issue could result in filing fees not being able to be recovered from lot owners that are in arrears as the corporate filing fee amount may be considered unreasonable in relation to Section 85 of the Strata Schemes Management Act NSW 2015, which provides that owners corporations can recover interest and the reasonable expenses incurred in recovering overdue contributions.
Check today
Is your legal representative filing Statements of Claim using the correct court filing fee?
Should you have any queries with relation to this article or should we be able to be of any assistance please do not hesitate to contact Paul Thorndike on 0429 008 247 or email us.
Author – Paul Thorndike
