How can I get back my dead mother&#39;s ring, which I gave to a family friend? My mother has been dead for a couple of years now and upon her death I received her butterfly ring and her ashes. I had given her ring to a family friend who was like a mother to mine, but unfortunately I may have to cut contact with her. Is there a way for me to get my mothers ring back? I was unaware she had several things from my mom and I had foolishly given it too her, while all I have to remember my mom is three photos and a name tag from her last job.
Sarah, thanks for your question. You have asked this on the Legal forum; and whilst there might be many moral or ethical considerations surrounding your situation - I'll try to deal with the legal principles here - which are distinct from what people consider 'fair' in the common sense of the word - simply discussing the legal basis of what you are asking. The relevant law here is 'Gifting' under the Law of Property - here A gift, in the law of property, is the voluntary transfer of property from one person (the donor or grantor) to another (the donee or grantee) without full valuable consideration. In order for a gift to be legally effective, three requirements must be met: Intention of donor to give the gift to the donee (donative intent) Delivery of gift to donee. Acceptance of gift by donee. Gifts are generally considered by the court to be either 'outright, remunerative or onerous' - so there can be conditions placed on the acceptance/receipt of a gift. However, it doesn't sound like these apply and that you have given this gift, free of conditions to the donee. There are special legal considerations with respect to engagement rings between would-be spouses where the donee actually typically keeps an engagement ring even if they fail to get married. This is under revocation. Unfortunately, from a strict legal point of view - a gift, is a gift - which broadly speaking means that if the person is not willing to return the gift, they are under no strict duty to do so. One can sue for return of the gift if undue influence was exerted over the donor by the donee: There are two main forms of conduct that are unacceptable: Acts of improper pressure or coercion such as unlawful threats. In the case of Etridge the judge made it clear that the court will intervene to set aside a transaction which is the product of “excessive pressure, emotional blackmail or bullying”. Failure to perform an equitable duty; g. where A trusts B and B takes unfair advantage of A. see here It would ultimately be for first, your solicitor and secondarily a court (or similar) to decide whether you had a legal case based on any undue influence you may have been under, based on the situation which you did not know that she had other items of your mother, leading you to gift her the ring. This is very context dependent. This legal process would be under a civil action against the donee. Of interest, the supreme court have limited the scope of 'undue influence'; the technical details can be seen here. I hope this is helpful.
In some states there is a law know as Caylee's Law, for example Connecticut General Statutes 53-21a(d) which requires reporting a child's disappearance: Any parent, guardian or person having custody or control, or providing supervision, of any child under the age of twelve years who knowingly fails to report the disappearance of such child to an appropriate law enforcement agency shall be guilty of a class A misdemeanor. For the purposes of this subsection, “disappearance of such child” means that the parent, guardian or person does not know the location of the child and has not had contact with the child for a twenty-four-hour period. Assume that they have done as the law requires, i.e. reporting the disappearance. It could be a crime for the parents to fake the kid's death, depending on what you did to "fake" the death. They might legally do things that could lead a person to think the child died; but telling the police, in the course of an investigation, that the child died in an accident, would be a crime. The parents would not have to convince the school district of anything, though someone at the school might alert the authorities that the child was gone (but they would know that anyway). They might well have to convince the police of something (i.e. that they didn't kill the child). It would certainly be a felony to lie to the IRS (i.e. claim the child as a dependent). It would also be a crime to continue to receive welfare payments or other benefits based on the fact of having a child.
It's highly unlikely that A would even recognise this as similar. It's really bog standard. A coloured patterned background (in a different colour and with a different pattern). Two buttons. A picture and a testimonial. All things that have been done thousands of times. In the end, it is _copy_right. What exactly is B supposed to have copied?
She never said that She said: When I joined that family, that was the last time, until we came here, that I saw my passport, my driver's licence, my keys. All that gets turned over With respect to my adult children and their passports, the same is true in my house. I ask them for their passports when they aren’t needed, they give them to me, I store them in a safe place and I give them back to them when they need them. That’s just a sensible precaution against them being lost and in no way illegal. Now if I took their passports without permission and withheld them when they wanted them, that would be illegal as it would for anyone else including the Queen (who, I’m sure, had absolutely nothing to do with it - that’s the job of the Keeper of the Royal Passports or some such). Similarly, if you came to my house and I offered to take your coat and you gave it to me and I gave it back when you left, that would be perfectly legal. When I pull up in my car, I put my keys in a bowl in the laundry (unless I forget and then I can’t find them and it’s really annoying). I would prefer instead to have an employee jump into the car, park it and put the keys in their bowl so that when I want the car latter, it’s their job to remember where they left the keys. But I can’t afford that.
The owner has the best claim The finder of lost property must: Hand it to the venue owner who will make reasonable efforts to find the owner. Hand it to police if it is a type of lost property police will accept - cash is such a type who will make reasonable efforts to find the owner Make reasonable efforts to find the owner. If, after a reasonable time the owner can’t be found, the person with custody may treat it as their own.
If the passport that was stolen is a U.S. one, you should report it by any of the channels outlined on the State Department's page Lost or Stolen Passports. The paper-reporting option is via form DS-64, which asks, among other things, whether you filed a police report; so it might be good to do that first. Form N-565 is a similar form for requesting the reissue of a naturalization certificate, and it, likewise, asks about any police report. Withholding someone's ID documents, knowing that they are necessary for travel, would be "false imprisonment" under both state and federal statutes. Also, 18 USC §§1426 and 1427 cover the crimes of "Reproduction of naturalization or citizenship papers" and "Sale of naturalization or citizenship papers"; a 10-year felony for a first offence. "Whosoever unlawfully ... disposes of a ... certificate of naturalization, ... shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than ... 10 years (in the case of the first or second such offense, if the offense was not committed to facilitate such an act of international terrorism or a drug trafficking crime)," If the police take your report but don't scare the possessor of your documentation into immediately returning it, you could sue him or her for the actual expenses of obtaining replacements in Small Claims court. If the mispossessed passport causes big enough damages, I guess you could sue in any court that has jurisdiction.
I am sorry for your loss, and that you have to deal with bills on top of everything else. The quick answer is yes, you might have to sell the house to pay your mother's bills. As you probably know, the estate includes both your mother's assets (cash, house, car, and so on) and her debts. In general, to &quot;settle the estate,&quot; the executor must pay all debts before she gives away any of the assets. Legal Aid of West Virginia has a helpful website about West Virginia probate law. Here is what it says about this issue: If you can’t pay all of your family member’s creditors from the person’s available money, you must sell off the family member’s property and pay the creditors in the order listed in W. Va. Code § 44-2-21; W. Va. Code §§ 44-1-18 to -20. You may have to sell the family member’s land or home in order to pay creditors. W. Va. Code § 44-8-7. Added after comments Under WV law, it does not matter that you were bequeathed your mother’s house. The law gives debtors priority over heirs. This means debtors are paid before any heir. Heirs are “paid” from whatever is left in the estate after the debts are paid. So if the estate is underwater, if it owes more than it is worth, there will be nothing left in the estate to give to the heirs. As executor, your job is to carry out West Virginia law. The nuts and bolts of what happens if you refuse to the sell the house depends on WV law. You might be able to find the details by searching on line, but your best bet is to probably to talk to an attorney who specializes in WV probate law. An attorney will know both the law on the books, and how that law is implemented. They will be able to advise you on what options you really have, and the costs and benefits of those options. If the estate is underwater, you could buy the house from the estate. If you do that, you will not be liable for any of your mother’s debts; those are owed by the estate. Depending on how the sale is handled, this may be your (financially) best option. (Depending on whether the price covers the debt, and on what other heirs are bequeathed, the court might worry about you selling yourself the house at a discount price, and thus look at the sale very carefully.)
I don't think that's an accurate interpretation of the statement. The key difference between the two scenarios is the defendant's legal assessment of who owns the necklace. In the first he thinks he is the owner and can claim mistake of law; in the second, he he thinks someone else is the owner, so he cannot. To say he believes "the law allows for someone to do whatever they want with lost property even if they know who the rightful owner is" is very different from saying he thinks he's the owner. He doesn't think he's the legal owner, he just thinks he has legal rights that include some rights associated with ownership. So if the defendant's statement had actually been, "I thought I was the owner," that would have been a successful defense when the crime requires depriving the owner of the property. The defense was actually, "I thought I was allowed to deprive the owner of the property," which is an admission of guilt when the crime requires depriving the owner of the property. There are a couple questions here: a. A different crime that did not require intent -- or even required a different kind of intent -- could still lead to a conviction. A legislature is free to define larceny differently, so it could say that anyone who recklessly or negligently deprives another of property is guilty. Or it could say that your state of mind doesn't matter and that depriving another of property is larceny regardless of intent. b. In most cases, the mistake of law defense requires that the defendant honestly believe in the mistake; unlike mistake of fact, it does not require that his belief also be reasonable. Either way, the question of reasonableness would probably be a question for a jury, so a judge wouldn't be able to reject it (except in a bench trial). c. Mistake of law is a potential defense to any crime that requires an intent to do something that requires an assessment of what the law is. So if it's illegal to intentionally have sex with a woman who is not your wife, and you mistakenly believed you were in a legal marriage, sex with your non-wife would not be a crime. It has potentially very broad implications, but keep in mind that in many cases, the mistake a defendant would have to claim would be pretty far out there. If it were illegal to intentionally let anyone under 21 years old into your bar, I guess you could argue that you only let a 20-year-old in because you thought the law started calculating at conception, but I doubt you'll convince a jury. Mistake of law defenses still pop up pretty regularly. Here's one just yesterday from the Tenth Circuit. And this one is a Kansas case where a conviction for carrying a weapon while a felon was overturned because the court wouldn't allow a mistake-of-law defense. The Kansas case, though, uses the more modern definition of mistake of law, which also includes reasonable reliance on official statements from the government. In that case, the felon's parole officer had told him that it was OK to carry a pocketknife, but in reality, the law titled "Criminal possession of a firearm by a convicted felon" prohibited carrying knives, as well.