Being elected a trustee often happens faster than people expect, a hand goes up at an AGM, and suddenly you're responsible for decisions that carry real legal weight. Most trustees are volunteers with no background in property law or building finance. Understanding the actual scope of the role, what it requires and what it doesn't, makes it far less daunting.
Where the Role Comes From
Trustees are elected by owners at the AGM to run the body corporate on behalf of all owners, in line with the Sectional Titles Schemes Management Act (STSMA) and its Prescribed Management Rules. The body corporate itself, not any individual trustee, is the legal entity, but trustees exercise its powers and carry the responsibility for doing so properly.
Core Duties of a Trustee
- Approving the annual budget and setting levies, based on the scheme's actual financial needs
- Overseeing maintenance and repair of common property
- Enforcing the scheme's conduct rules fairly and consistently
- Ensuring the scheme's insurance is adequate and up to date
- Making decisions between AGMs on matters affecting the scheme
- Acting in the best interests of the body corporate as a whole, not any single owner's personal interests
What Powers Trustees Actually Have
Trustees can generally make day-to-day management decisions without calling a full owners' meeting. However, certain decisions, like raising a special levy above a set threshold, or making changes to the scheme's rules, require a resolution passed at a general meeting. A managing agent typically advises trustees on which category a given decision falls into, since getting this wrong can make a resolution legally invalid.
Fiduciary Duty and Personal Liability
Trustees owe the body corporate a fiduciary duty: they must act honestly, in good faith, and in the scheme's best interests rather than their own. This matters practically. A trustee who approves spending clearly outside their authority, or who acts with obvious negligence, can in some circumstances face personal liability. This is one of the strongest arguments for having a managing agent guide procedural and legal decisions, since it protects trustees as much as it protects the scheme.
What Trustees Are Not Expected to Do
Trustees are not expected to personally collect levies, chase arrears, draft legal notices, or manage contractor relationships day to day, that's precisely the operational work a managing agent takes on. The trustee role is one of oversight and decision-making, not hands-on administration. Schemes that don't draw this line clearly often end up with burnt-out trustees fielding maintenance calls at 9pm.
Making the Role Sustainable
The trustees who last longest, and the schemes that run best, are usually the ones where trustees focus on governance and strategic decisions, while a managing agent handles execution. If you're a trustee finding the role has become a second full-time job, that's usually a sign the balance has tipped too far toward hands-on admin.
If your board is spending more time on admin than decisions, it might be time to talk to a managing agent.
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