Legal tip 1413.Supreme Court Crack Down on Timeshare Contracts
03 December 2016 @ 18:04
Our Supreme Court is being very brave and wise when sanctioning illegal schemes of timeshare rights which are spread out along the Spanish Coasts.
Law which is being applied is from 1998 which rules all existing timeshares in Spain till July 2012, when the current law entered into force. Both texts are a great combination of both European and Spanish Law (Directives and national law of Spain). They aim for a harmonic and no contradictory body of rules to govern these products.
A recent emblematic Court decision on this field was passed by the Supreme Court on the 29th of March, 2016. The statements of this Supreme Court decision are being applied by numerous Appeal Courts and Supreme Court itself since then.
The High Court states that contracts with no precise “object: housing unit” or “time: period of enjoyment which needs to be 3-50 years” are null and void. This means, in principle, that a full refund of all payments plus interests to the consumer/user is due.
2 specifications
1) Proportional refund
Supreme Court applying the “corrective” article 3 of our Civil Code, it states that it has to be evaluated that the consumers enjoyed the timeshare scheme for 11 years and therefore “the reimbursement of the paid amounts do not have to be total but proportionated to time it will not be enjoyed, knowing that the legal maximums for these contracts are of 50 years.
Other previous judgments of the Supreme with the same pronouncements are those of January 15, 2015, September 8, 2015 and January 15, 2014.
2) Banks are also liable
Spain Supreme Court has also established, in April 2015, that Financers (Banks, Saving Banks, lenders….) which participated of the business by providing the loans are also under the obligation to refund you.
In our practice almost all contracts signed by timeshare owners coming to the Law Firm for advice are in-existent (null and void) or can be cancelled, in both cases with refund of amounts paid after applying the proportionality rule explained above.
For more info, you can look at CostaluzLawyers Timeshare service