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Comment by Volundr | Hacker News Reader

I think it can. More scary though, when you die unless they take active action to refuse it, your kids or whoever your inheritance goes to gets it by default. With all the financial obligations.

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Yeah, John Oliver just did a Last Week Tonight on Timeshares. He goes over that in the video. Also there are scam companies that exist that promise to take your money to help you exit your timeshare agreement, then disappear. So you get double-scammed. And somehow this is technically legal?

Link to the Last Week Tonight video: https://youtu.be/Bd2bbHoVQSM

I was contacted by those people and others, both threatening and claiming to want to help. I had a suspicion they were all affiliated with the parent scam company Westgate and so never considered dealing with any of them. Maybe they weren't related to Westgate but good to keep in mind anyone in this space is not to be trusted.

Why can't you create a corporation, have the corp buy it from you for $1, and then go bankrupt in a month or three?

Could this work? It could potentially help a very large number of people get out of these scams. Seems so obvious now that you point it out I imagine someone must've thought of this before.

I imagine the timeshare company has right of first refusal for transfers, or will be adding that to their contracts as soon as this is a thing.

Now, is it legal? Maybe, maybe not. But they will pretend it is until you take them to court, and they'll quickly settle if you agree not to tell anyone else.

A right of first refusal just means that they have the opportunity to buy the timeshare before you can sell it to anyone else. That would be a-ok for the customer, since either way the timeshare's off their hands.

Or maybe find people at end-of-life with no heirs that would buy it for a $1 in exchange for a donation to their charity of choice.

You'd need to be careful about how you setup and run the corporation such that the veil can't be pierced. If a court got involved, I think they'd be nonplussed if the corporation was organized, acquired the property, and filed for bankruptcy within a couple of months.

I guess if you inherit a timeshare you can just insist that it goes to a sibling. Or, even better, a step-sibling...

You can also tell probate court that you refuse the inheritance. You can't be forced to inherit something

You can, but there is specific paperwork you have to file and you have something like 90 days to do it. And then the next person in line has to, and the next.

Unless everyone is on the ball and actively refuses it, someone gets stuck with it.

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