I don't think SE considered the effect all of these free weekends have on their mechanism for passing FC leadership after the leader has been gone for 35 days. If these characters return on free time the counter is reset.

The current leader of my little fc was almost at 35 last free weekend, and logged in briefly. This time he has about 10 days left before removal and here comes another free weekend. Assuming there is another weekend coming to celebrate the final 2.x patch or the advent of the expansion I'm looking at over a hundred days at least before I gain back control of my guild (I created it, and gave it to the RL friend when I had to travel for work... for a bit over a week).

The necessity is low (I'm the second highest rank of a mostly inactive guild with every single permission) and I'm not willing to push the issue with the person because I value the irl friendship more than a title, but it would certainty be nice if this system worked the way it was intended to.