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Fraud by any other name is still fraud... (by KC):

iank29 wrote:

Thank you for your response. I should have been more clear that I was talking about deeding it to a willing third party. I'm not talking about fraud in any way.

I'm talking about what options there are for people who have not been able to give their timeshare away. If it were a willing 3rd party entity (such as an LLC), this would work, right? The 3rd party entity could exist for the purpose of rescuing people from unwanted timeshares. It could sell those that were saleable, give the unsaleable ones back to the resort, and allow foreclosure of those that the resorts won't accept.

The current owner, just because they accepted a free timeshare or paid for it, didn't agree to an obligation for life that they can't get out of, and that can keep going up and up in cost, particularly in an economy like this. In fact, if they bought it second-hand, they didn't agree to anything whatsoever. If they choose to let it go, or donate it to a 3rd party, that's their option.

Yes, it will cost the remaining owners more. The remaining owners have an option to do the same, or to stay as owners, and if they stay as owners, to encourage the resort to do everything possible to keep dues absolutely rock-bottom so the timeshares become more valuable. But, none of this is any obligation on any owner-they can always get rid of theirs if they want to.

Once deeded out of your name, with the deed and transfer fee provided to the resort, there is no way they can foreclose on you nor ding your credit, right?

I'm reading a lot of misinformation, I think, in all these forums regarding this issue. People are being wrongly scared into keeping their timeshares.

I respectfully but completely disagree with your expressed logic and with your incorrect "legal reasoning" for a whole variety of reasons, a very few of which I will itemize below:

1. Pointing out the cold, hard reality of applicable law is certainly not any kind of effort to "scare" anyone. On the contrary, providing irrefutable facts to consider alongside the many uninformed and ill advised theories, schemes and opinions so prevalent in the unfiltered "Internet world" merely provides additional "food for thought". In the final analysis, the law simply "is what it is" and will ultimately prevail, whether or not you (or I, or anyone else) approve.

2. Many HOA's have competent, attentive and aggressive attorneys on their Board of Directors (...I know for a fact that MINE certainly do ;-). These folks would never passively accept or acknowledge the legal validity of any deed signed over to a shell LLC without a (guaranteed successful) legal challenge. You might well find that pursuing a flawed plan to sign over a deed to some bogus, shell LLC would promptly come right back to bite you in the backside.

The fundamental purpose of a LLC is (essentially) to provide people with limited protection from personal liability in the course of a business practice. It is certainly NOT the purpose or function of a LLC to help "hide" any individual from their previous contractual obligations into which they voluntarily entered of their own free will. Sorry, but pursuing this particular route is really just a different road which still travels directly into a town named FRAUD...

3. Finally, I hope that your introduction here of this flawed "LLC hiding place" plan is not just a subtle way of "introducing" or leading into the later identification of some shell LLC which (...for a fee, of course) will later "offer their services" for a (doomed) attempt to "walk away" from the clear, legal and contractual obligations of timeshare ownership. As my subject line indicates, fraud by another name is still FRAUD. Better to give the timeshare away and pay the closing costs to do so too, if necessary, rather than engage in unethical (and more significantly, unlawful) activity.

This is just a discussion forum and certainly not formal dispensing of legal advice. You are certainly entitled to express a viewpoint, but I personally find your proposal to be immoral, illegal and potentially dangerous to pursue. Nonetheless, it is certainly your (and everyone else's) choice and prerogative to choose and to act as they may see fit... just don't conveniently fail to acknowledge or accept that there ARE consequences to ANY chosen course of action.