I wouldn't say "trade and transfer fee free" exactly. What Marriott will allow is that if two people want to combine points for the ordering of a particular award, they can do that. But it has to be done at the time the award itself is ordered.

BTW, do you have a Marriott branded CC? If not, you should be able grab another 20K points for that, plus a free night coupon. Marriott actually has 3 different versions of CCs that you could apply for. It used to be that you could get the 20K bonus points for each of the three (i.e. 60K bonus points). I'm not sure if you can do that or not, but if so, if you and a friend were to apply and receive all three cards, then you would have 120K+ to use between the two of you.