UK timeshare

Malthusian

Pollycat wrote: »

This question rang a bell so I Googled and found this:
http://www.thisismoney.co.uk/money/experts/article-2698355/TONY-HETHERGINGTON-Even-death-not-rid-timeshare.html

Which suggests that the executors probably will have to either pay up to "buy out" the timeshare sharks, or tell them to go forth and multiply and be prepared to test the argument (which I agree with) that maintenance contracts longer than 12 months are unenforceable in court. Otherwise the timeshare company will charge maintenance fees to the estate and as a creditor, they will have to be paid off or beaten in court before the estate can be distributed.

Leaving it to the timeshare company is a nice idea but the company would probably refuse - you can't be forced to inherit something. As the property is going to revert to the timeshare company anyway, after they have raked off some more maintenance fees or exit fees (or tried to), they have no incentive to accept it.

If I was the OP's parents I would get out of the contract now while I was still energetic enough to be up for a fight, and save my heirs the bother. If they actually wanted to stay in that place year after year the OP wouldn't have typed the word "relatively" before the word "happy".

securityguy

"and be prepared to test the argument (which I agree with) that maintenance contracts longer than 12 months are unenforceable in court."

It would be unlikely to come to court.

The last thing that the timeshare sharks need is a judgement in a reported court saying that their contracts are unenforceable: they are much better off scaring people with uncertainty. So someone who said "get stuffed, we'll see you in court" would probably find the case quietly dropped and the debt written off. The point about timeshare sharks is that they rely on the financial naivety of the purchasers, so they can be relatively sure that their victims will be nervous about courts. It's therefore hard to find out what the outcomes of these sort of cases are, because they either result in frightened victims paying up or emboldened victims having the debt quietly written off.

Executors would do well to tell them to get stuffed, because the residual beneficiaries could quite justifiability question the legitimacy of the payments from the estate of these sort of "debts". The responsibility of estates to take on long-term payments are sharply limited, and it's unimaginable that a court would hold in favour of the sharks, so executors who were confronted with a situation like this but didn't challenge it would be doing so at their peril.

Pollycat

@ timeshareowners:
This is a UK website.

MoneySavingExpert.com is the UK's biggest consumer website, with about 16 million users a month.

Will calling the "US consumer Attorney" really help?

Philip_Butterworth

We had several timeshares and the maintenance fees were initially very low, but then increased year on year until each one was £500 or more. We just abandoned them gradually one by one and ignored the “threatening” letters from the management companies, they gave up eventually. We did try selling and there are several companies that offer to sell your timeshare for an up-front payment of several £00s to cover advertising and admin. Don’t be conned, there is no demand for second-hand timeshares. Just dump them!

xylophone

Is your parents' timeshare company an RDO member?

https://rdo.org/industry-updates/rdo-strengthens-its-code-of-conduct-to-give-enhanced-flexibility-to-legacy-timeshare-owners/

RDO’s new requirements, recently approved by the Board, go over and above those covered by law and in addition to it now being mandatory for members to have an overall exit programme in place, the following specific new elements have been adopted (although in the case of some members and their clubs such practices have been in place already for a number of years):

*In the event of the death of a joint owner, the surviving owner can surrender their timeshare if they wish and additionally, the beneficiaries of a will are not obliged to take on the timeshare if they do not wish to do so.

HampshireH

The OP posted in 2017. Either they got the answer they wanted, or they weren't that bothered by the responses as they never logged back in