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I went thru a rather bloddy estate battle over the last 5 years and while I'm not an Atty, I certainly read a lot. technically, anything at all owned by the decedent which carries a creditor type responsibility is the responsibility of the estate. So on the one hand, even if all assets are in a living trust except the timeshares, the trustee of the estate (who is probably also the trustee of the trust) has a fiduciary and legal responsibility to address the timeshares. The timeshare companies have a legal right to bring their creditor claims to the estate and receive appropriate compensation. I say this initially in regard to annual maintenance but it also applies to foreclosure as well. What will probably happen if the trustee does not address the timeshare creditors? Legally I believe this is what could happen: - Creditors can petition the court to fulfil remedy from the estate, even by clawing back any funds ditributed to beneficiaries. It would be an extremely rare situation where a trust and wills had been correctly designed to block timeshare assets and liabilities from the remainder of the estate. In my experience, most people will not spend the money nor have the ability to determine if the lawyer they hired properly configured their estate to achieve this goal. In my opinion, you would spend more money on the lawyer than the cost of the timeshares and timeshare liabilities, then after you passed your estate could spend even more than that on the atty defending against the timeshare claim on the estate. And if the atty who drew up the trust and wills did not do the job correctly (as in the case I experienced), you threw money out the window and will never know about it. - Placing "all" assets in a living trust except timeshares will most likely not protect the trust assets. Most estates use pour over wills to move all non trust assets into the purview of the trust. This is to cover the control of personal assets which usually can't be recorded as a trust asset, and keeps those assets out of the probate process. Assets which usually are not included in trusts are cars which people tend to not buy as a trust asset, many bank accounts are often not placed into trust ownership - especially ones opened after the trust is created, and all the little personal items such as jewelry/furniture/collectibles. - Even if the timeshares were excluded, if those companies went to probate court to lay a claim, the estate would incur legal expenses defending against the claims. "But since there are no assets, they can't get any money" you say. Think about it. A creditor whom you think you have complete protection from goes to probate court. That creditor has a lot more money to spend on lawyers. Do you really think you can get away with walking into probate court and show the judge a trust document and think the judge will dismiss the case? You're going to incur legal fees no matter what if the creditor files in court. But here's what I think would happen: - You ignore all notices from the timeshare companies. Eventually the timeshare is foreclosed on. I think given that the owners are deceased, no one will spend time taking legal action to claim any unrecovered amount owed. It will cost the timeshare or collections companies too much money than the amount owed and they'll write it off. - the best example I have is about an RV in the estate conflict I was in. The trustee chose to "keep" the RV for herself even though it was designated to go to the decedents' children. Granted, the children didn't want the RV since it was worth $50k and there was a loan of $75k attached to it, but the issue is about the net $25k owed on the RV. The decedent pays the RV loan for two years, then notifies the lender (without telling the children) she will no longer pay and allows the lender to reposess the RV. By this time there is $15k the lender doesn't recover. technically the trustee never notified the lender of the decedent's death. IMHO this means a 1 year statute of limitation never ran out since it required the trustee to notify the lender of the decedent's death. At one point the children notified the lender of the decedent's death, but the lender only used that notification in an attempt to extract money from the children since that lender had already failed to convince the trustee to pay. the lender never went to probate court to secure or claw back any funds from the trustee or estate.