You really need to talk to a CPA and/or real estate attorney in your jurisdiction. And also at issue is how the property has been handled for tax purposes to-date. Has it been depreciated as an investment property? Have maintenance expenses been used to offset income? How has this been handled on each party's taxes to date? Without knowing the above, and without being an expert in your area, I don't see how the scenario can be spun as a sale "not" taking place. The mental gymnastics required would land on "I'm gifting you this interest in our joint property for no consideration, and then you are gifting me DP + $20,000, but the two have nothing to do with one another."

The lack of development is neither bad not good: It will appeal to some buyers later, and not to others. Feature it - "quiet, uncrowded lakefront" And the lack of a beach - if the whole area is rocky, it's not a feature for anyone else, is it? If you can place some BIG flat rocks for sunning, that would be nice. Baking like a lizard on a rock is good. The "draw-down" is typical for a hydraulic power company. They want to make sure they aren't overwhelmed by snow melt in the spring, so they balance the outflow on their lakes to maximize recreation and power use. The last thing they want is to get caught with too-full reservoirs and a sudden thaw that means dumping water over the spillways instead of running it through the generators. We've been in that situation in AZ and it's with a city of a few million and some critical bridges below the dams. If the Salt River Project says "we're dumping water to save the dams" we often lose bridges or at least the approach ramps to them. The newer bridges are designed with "sacrificial washout" areas that are easily eroded by the flood and cheaper/easier to replace then the entire bridge. But it still screws up traffic for weeks.

Just to add to the information about Easter, while its name and certain traditions may derive from pagan Europe, its date and the most important events derive directly from Passover. In fact, I would bet that with the use of computers the actual date of the original Easter has already been determined. There might be a two-three year range, depending on when Jesus was born. But whereas we will probably never know even the season of the first Christmas, there's no doubt about Easter. This is a nice conversation; I don't see anything controversial here. I am Jewish and I love the Christmas season, including nativity scenes anywhere and saying "Merry Christmas". This is a 95% Christian country, for heavens' sake!

What is Trump's admiration for Putin all about? Who knows for sure, but it probably has to do with his business involvements with russian oligarchs. From WaPo: There is strong evidence that Trump’s businesses have received significant funding from Russian investors. Most notably, Trump’s son Donald Trump Jr. made that very claim at a real estate conference in New York in 2008, saying “Russians make up a pretty disproportionate cross-section of a lot of our assets.” Donald Trump Jr. added, “we see a lot of money pouring in from Russia.” Trump also made millions when he agreed to bring the Miss Universe pageant to Moscow in 2013, a deal financed in part by the development company of a Russian billionaire Aras Agalarov. Agalarov is a Putin ally who is sometimes called the “Trump of Russia” because of his tendency to put his own name on his buildings. At the time, Trump mingled with the Russian business elite at a swanky after-party. “Almost all of the oligarchs were in the room,” Trump bragged on returning home. As a sign of the importance of Russian investors, partners of one of Trump’s projects then under construction in Panama visited Moscow to sell condos at the building in 2006. Trump also made significant money from one Russian oligarch in 2008, when he sold a mansion in Palm Beach for $95 million to Russian billionaire Dmitry Rybolovlev. Trump had bought the home at a bankruptcy auction less than four years earlier for $41.4 million.