Maintenance Fees past due -- seeking advice

Seeking advice. I have owned a Timeshare with Driftwood Worldgate Resort out of Kissimee, FL since 2007. The mortgage has been paid off, and only paying maintenance fees now. I have done some research and believe that this company is no longer in business and that the Timeshare is now owned by Days. We have only used this Timeshare one time and now the escalating maintenance fees (which we pay every even year) have become too large to afford, given we never use it. I am currently behind 2 maintenance fee payments, and cannot afford to get it up to date, nor have any desire to do so or continue to own this Timeshare. If I simply stop paying, will this eventually be foreclosed upon and ownership end? Do I need to be worried about the scare of being taken to court and wages potentially garnished, along with a the negative 7-year credit hit, that I have read is a possible tactic ... or is this just a scare tactic that will likely never be acted upon? I am ok with the credit hit that a collection agency (if it goes to collections) could impose on me, but am worried about this potentially being taken to court and being forced to pay anyway. Any assistance/advice is greatly appreciated.

- Jamie

jamied86 wrote:

If I simply stop paying, will this eventually be foreclosed upon and ownership end? Do I need to be worried about the scare of being taken to court and wages potentially garnished, along with a the negative 7-year credit hit, that I have read is a possible tactic ... or is this just a scare tactic that will likely never be acted upon? I am ok with the credit hit that a collection agency (if it goes to collections) could impose on me, but am worried about this potentially being taken to court and being forced to pay anyway. Any assistance/advice is greatly appreciated.

Yes, if you stop paying there will eventually be a foreclosure, but likely not until some collection efforts are undertaken (efforts which you can simply ignore). However, it could be 1-2 years before foreclosure proceedings get initiated.

No, you will not be taken to court and there will be no effort to garnish wages. That does not happen for a fully paid off timeshare on which you just stop paying maintenance fees; they know that they got plenty of your money already.

Maybe, a negative credit report would be initiated at some point. If so, it would remain in place for 7 years. However, IF there is no loan default involved (only non-payment of maintenance fees for a timeshare that is already fully paid off), limited available statistics indicate that about 75% of the time a negative credit report never gets initiated at all. It's a different story when a loan default is involved; loan default creates much higher likelihood of a negative credit report.