A co-owner has the right to have the key to all general common areas, whether he actually needs it or not. The Court of Cassation therefore ruled in favor of a co-owner who demanded the key to the staircase even though he lived on the ground floor.
The trustee, supported by certain co-owners following a dispute with the person concerned, refused to provide him with the keys to the main staircase and the access code to certain parts of the building. He doesn’t need it, they said, because he accesses his accommodation through a door that opens directly into the courtyard.
But these material considerations do not impact the rights of the co-owner, the Court of Cassation corrected. If the staircase of the building is not classified by the co-ownership regulations as a special common part, reserved for certain co-owners and financed by them alone, it is a general common part of which all the co-owners are undivided owners, which gives all a right of access and use. It does not matter that it is objectively useless to them, the judges clarified.
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And even if the co-ownership regulations, established before the Elan law of November 2018, only impose the costs of the staircase on its users, and not on this inhabitant of the ground floor, this does not reduce the rights of this one on this common area.
(Cass. Civ 3, 8.2.2024, W 22-24.119).
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