By Graham Paddock
The Sectional Titles Schemes Management Act, 2011 and its prescribed rules, do not allow individual trustees to appoint proxies to represent them at trustee meetings. However, the trustees as a group can appoint a temporary replacement for a trustee they know is going to be temporarily unable to act as such. The appointment must be for a specified period.
Trustee meetings need a quorum of half of their number and a single trustee cannot have a meeting, so where a body corporate only has two or three trustees, it makes sense to appoint a replacement for the duration of any planned absences.
The replacement trustee can be any natural person, except the scheme’s managing agent or one of the scheme’s managing agency’s employees, unless that person is also the owner of a unit in the scheme.
A resolution in terms of prescribed management rule 7 (7) to appoint the replacement trustee, could be worded on the following lines: “[Name of Replacement], who is qualified to serve as a trustee, is hereby appointed to replace [Name of Trustee] in this capacity for the period [Start Date] to [End Date]”. The text of the resolution must appear in the minutes of the trustee meeting at which the decision is taken by majority vote.
Should you require any advice on this subject, or wish to discuss any related matter with a specialist community schemes attorney, don’t hesitate to contact our consulting department at consulting@paddocks.co.za for a no-obligation quote, to provide the necessary legal assistance.
