The contingency fund and Loi 16, in plain words

Since 2019 the Civil Code of Québec has asked more of syndicates of co-owners. Most boards first hear about "Loi 16" from their manager, from their insurer or from an annoyed co-owner, and rarely in the words of the law itself. This guide takes the four articles Savoir cites, says what each one asks, and explains why the assistant keeps them apart from everything else.

The four articles Savoir cites

These are the four the product holds in its legal corpus, in both languages, with the day a person last read them against the official text on LégisQuébec. This site's Loi 16 page shows them in full, with that date and the official link.

1070 — The co-ownership register

The article gives the list of what the syndicate keeps at the disposal of the co-owners: minutes, financial statements, the declaration, the plans of the immovable as built, the maintenance logbook, the contingency fund study. That is exactly the list a co-owner asks to consult, and rarely at the moment that suits the board.

1071 — The contingency fund and its study

The fund is kept for major repairs and the replacement of the common portions, and the amounts paid into it are set in the light of the study's recommendations. The question that follows is always the same, at the meeting and in the lobby: why has my contribution gone up.

1073 — The syndicate's insurance

The syndicate insures the immovable, and the insured amount is appraised again. A co-owner who wants to know what is covered is asking a question whose answer is in the policy, not in an article of the code.

1074.1 — The deductible, a common expense

The deductible payable on a claim is a common expense. It is the sentence most often quoted wrongly in a board's e-mail, and the one best shown exactly as it is written.

What the board actually has to do

None of this is an IT project. It is filing-cabinet work:

• Keep the register current, and be able to show it without rebuilding it each time.
• Have the contingency fund study done, then set the contributions in its light.
• Keep the maintenance logbook with everything else, rather than in the president's inbox.
• Keep the insurance policies and their endorsements with the documents co-owners may consult.

A syndicate that has those documents in one place has already done the hard part. Savoir does not replace that work: it makes those documents answerable by the people who ask the questions.

How Savoir cites the law, apart

When a question is about the building's own documents, the answer names the document and the section it stood on. When the question is about the obligation itself, the assistant adds a second group of sources, after the syndicate's documents and never mixed into them: the articles of the Civil Code, with their number, their title and their text.

That group always carries the same notice:

Legal information, not legal advice.

It is not a stylistic precaution. An assistant that answered "you must" to a question of law would be standing in for the syndicate's lawyer, and no board should take a decision at a general meeting on the strength of a piece of software. What Savoir does is put the article in front of the person asking, with the link to the official text — enough to arrive at the conversation informed, not enough to replace it.

Try it on your own documents

The best test takes one evening: upload the declaration of co-ownership, the minutes and the fund study, then ask the question you receive most often.

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