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Thank you Mr Zimmerman for your insight on the buy back/owner debt issues. Let me be clear, I do not fault anyone who stopped paying their maintenance fees. I considered doing that a few years back. But I knew I had a legal obligation to pay it now or pay it later. Did I like paying two times more then what I could rent the same room for on the open market. Heck NO. But I realized that a large part of the increased fee was due in part to the shortfall caused by some owners not paying their fees. But please, DO NOT LET TMC SCAM YOU ONE LAST TIME. You will be required to pay your past due fees sooner or later. That past due money does not belong to TMC, it belongs to ALL owners and should go back into the budget when received as income, thus lowering the maintenance fees. A follow-up question for Mr. Zimmerman. Is it possible for the owners association to forgive an owners debt, take back their unit at no cost, and resell the unit with the money made from the sale going back into the budget as income? That would be a win, win for everyone. I have not joined your law suit yet, but I am strongly concidering doing so. [Q=jeanmarcz] Message from Jean-Marc Zimmerman of Zimmerman Law Group: We understand that various TMC timeshare owners who are in default on their maintenance fee and tax payments are receiving “offers” to give-back their interests (“units”) for zero compensation, with no liability for past due fees or taxes. We do not understand, from the public posts, exactly who is offering to acquire the units. TMC has no budget to acquire units, and at the annual meeting, made no suggestion that there would be any acquisitions, and in fact the Board made clear that there would be no acquisitions. TMC does not apparently have the right to simply forgive the bad debt, and if they do acquire the units back from owners, it has no mechanism to resell them. Similarly, it would be a breach of fiduciary duty and waste of corporate assets for TMC to simply give these units to BlueGreen or the Eichners, and the valuation for such a transfer would require a forensic accountant since any such transaction is an interested party transaction. It appears from TMC’s timeshare plan that BlueGreen cannot simply acquire the units directly from owners, without paying the arrearages to TMC in order to be able to use or resell those units. TMC is a valuable asset. If we assume for the sake of argument that TMC is worth $150 million, then each of the 286 rooms is worth approximately $10,000 per week. However, by virtue of the wrongful conduct committed by TMC’s Sponsor (as admitted in the Assurance of Discontinuance) and given the current onerous management contract and excessive maintenance fees still being charged, many owners are sufficiently demoralized with their TMC ownership experience to be willing to give back their units, with no return of either the whole or a portion of their initial equity investment. Thus, the Sponsor has achieved its apparent goal of making the timeshare owners’ equity worthless. This is a key basis for our proposed suit, and we believe that if TMC was properly managed, and freed of the Sponsor’s wrongful conduct and existing management contract, it could be as good an “investment” as owners believed when they first paid their hard-earned dollars to purchase their units. The give-back offer is an apparent furtherance of an effort to appropriate the entirety of the $400 million dollars paid by the timeshare owners in the first place. So, if an owner is in arrears significantly less than $10,000, we believe that the offer to return the equity interest is not a good offer. One must presume that that acquirer of the inventory sees a potential for profit in doing so. However, it appears that they want to keep the current market value suppressed to zero until they can appropriate all of the available units for their own ends. Of course, if an owner owes arrearages of greater than $10,000, and the buyer is the proper entity to grant a waiver or release of the owner’s debt (or is willing to pay the arrearages to TMC in cash), that could be a good deal. But, the willingness of an entity to do so must be considered evidence of a profit motivation. Please note that the rescission of debt is taxable income, and the owner may have to pay taxes on the forgiven debt. Meanwhile, the reduction in value of the timeshare is a capital loss and might not be fully deductible. Please consult a competent attorney, before entering into any such transaction! In conclusion, this new information regarding the proposed give-back of timeshare interests currently in default is significant and needs to be monitored, and as we more fully understand the facts, we will study the applicable law and consider action. Jean-Marc Zimmerman Zimmerman Law Group 233 Watchung Fork Westfield, NJ 07090 jmz@tmcsuit.com This communication constitutes an advertisement under the Rules of Professional Conduct governing the practice of lawyers. Our past results are no guarantee of future performance.[/Q]