Original Message:
The Internet is no place for competent legal advice... (by KC):
emmac27 wrote:With all due respect, you might consider seeking competent legal advice from an attorney familiar with estate matters. Legal "advice" from anonymous, unknown Internet posters (most of whom have neither a law degree nor ANY actual legal experience in the first place) is usually worth exactly what you've paid for it.Please let me know if this is correct: 1. If a parent dies and leaves their child a timeshare, the child does NOT have to accept the timeshare. 2. Whoever is handling the estate must pay any currently due maintenance fees and taxes before the estate can be closed. 3. If the child has not accepted the timeshare and estate is closed, the timeshare company can not force the child to continue paying timeshare fees and taxes. However, you wrote, "Until the timeshare has been sold, given away and out of the decedent's name the estate is still responsible". So is the estate unable to be closed until the timeshare is out of the decedent's name? If so, I would never buy or recommend that anyone buy a timeshare! What a hassel! 4. If the child cannot sell or give the timeshare away, he/she can see if the timeshare company would like to take she timeshare back, but the child is not required to do anything, just the estate. Is that correct? What if the estate has been closed?
That said, deeding a week over to an unknowing recipient without the consent, knowledge and overt acceptance of that "grantee" essentially constitutes an act of fraud (which, worthy of note, is a criminal offense). You don't want to even THINK about going down that road...
ONE bit of valid advice which I've read above is that inquiry should always be made (...but in writing only) directly to the resort involved to request HOA acceptance of "deed in lieu of foreclosure". A smart HOA knows that they are "over a barrel" when a decedent's heirs don't want to inherit or accept timeshare week(s); they are NEVER under ANY legal obligation to do so. Rather than incur the time (and expense) of having to initiate foreclosure proceedings on their own, a smart HOA will sometimes just take the week back (assuming it's fully paid for and not "financed"), often requiring only payment of the associated closing costs (generally around $300 or so). It can't ever hurt to ask (...but do so ONLY in writing, NOT by a phone call to a clueless resort desk clerk who has neither the pertinent knowledge nor the legal authority to even DISCUSS the matter in the first place).