
What is the deadline for the payment of community fees?
The limitation period for the action to demand payment of community fees of a property under the horizontal property regime is the five-year period provided for in the aforementioned article 1966-3.º of the Civil Code (and not the period established in art. 1964 CC), referring to actions ordered to demand payments to be made in years or in shorter periods, a situation in which the case of the contribution of the co-owners to the common expenses established as an obligation in article 9.1.e) LPH is fully subsumable, without the fact that it is an obligation provided for in the law itself having to determine the application of a different limitation period.
The appealability of the legal question only affects claims for unpaid fees prior to the entry into force of Law 42/2015, of 5 October, as this law has modified article 1964 CC establishing a general limitation period for personal actions of five years, coinciding with that provided for in article 1966-3.º, which has not been modified. The budgets of the community are annual and in the annual financial year the corresponding expenses are incurred which have to be paid by the co-owners according to the assigned quota.
Precisely the deferral of payments by monthly instalments, in this case of community fees, responds to the need not to overburden family economies, and it is incomprehensible that the community should allow such a long period of time to elapse - in this case, considerably more than five years - in order to demand payment from the co-owner. It is a rule inspired by favour debitoris, as it is intended to prevent debtors from being harmed by a continuous and successive accumulation of debt that could lead them to ruin.
(Judgment of the Supreme Court, Civil Chamber, 3 June 2020, appeal 3299/2017).