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Original Message:

Re: Get out of Westgate Resorts (by KC):

Joe K:

My suggestion would be to have a (likely free) initial consultation with an attorney. When you "notified" Westgate in 2014, did you do so by providing a copy of a death certificate? (hopefully yes). If not, a death certificate (and maybe also an affidavit) will almost certainly be required now in order to pursue a Legacy program "deedback" to Westgate (or to complete any other transfer of ownership, for that matter). I am assuming that your mother's name and your name are the only names on the associated deed.

I am NOT providing (or offering) legal advice here, but I will share some directly related personal experience. Specifically, I bought a timeshare fixed week a few years ago where the husband of the seller was deceased; both husband and wife names were on the deed. The closing company paralegal (not me, as the buyer) required the widow to provide a death certificate and an affidavit regarding her deceased husband in order for her to be able to cleanly transfer ownership of that timeshare week. You may well find yourself subjected to those very same requirements in order to execute a quitclaim deed back to Westgate under their "Legacy" program. By the way, Westgate will still require you to pay for this deedback "privilege"; reports I've seen of the fee seem to range from $900 to $1,800. I have no idea why there is such a wide range there or why there isn't one consistent figure for their deedback / extortion "fee".

If you just don't want to bothered with this matter any further at all, you can choose to simply stop paying Wastegate any further maintenance fees, tell them to go pound sand --- and let them go right ahead and foreclose whenever they choose to do so. I assume that maintenance fees are current (a basic requirement for any "deedback"), since if no one has been paying the maintenance fees since your mother's passing in 2014, foreclosure would likely have already occurred years ago. Have you verified the current status of the ownership account directly with Westgate?