Can you take back a gift? Suppose that I unconditionally and unambiguously give a person a thing such as a necklace with a moderate value (say $1000): I hand it to them and say "Here, you can have this, I don't need it anymore". Then suppose I have giver's remorse and the next day I request that it be returned. Assuming that the recipient has not relied on the fact of me giving it to them (all they would lose is the necklace), can I revoke the act of giving (so that the courts would order the return of the gift)? Then, suppose that I intended to give necklace A but mistakenly gave necklace B which I did not intend to give: can I legally reclaim B? In case it's not clear, I am not asking how I can guarantee a take-back right prior to giving the thing, so agreements are irrelevant. As always, relevant citations appreciated.
No. By handing the necklace the way you described, you commit personal property transfer as all the three requirements are met for the gift to be legally effective: donative intent, delivery and acceptance. Once property has been transferred (no matter gift or sale), it is not yours anymore.
There is something wrong-sounding about that claim. Owning a thing (such as a book) means that you can dispose of it however you want. If it is a physical book, then unless this is a book of top secret classified information, the US government has no control over the item, nor does the copyright holder have any right to prevent you from giving away your copy. Electronic books, however, are another matter, since often you don't buy such books, you buy a license to use the book (like a software license). The license terms of an electronic book could be subject to various controls, and the license might be non-transferable. The underlying logic of this is that under the doctrine of first sale, you are allowed to do whatever you want with intellectual property that you buy, and therefore to restrict re-distribution of electronic IP, software especially is typically not itself sold, and just the permission to use it is. If this is an electronic book, the copyright holder would be able (though not necessarily willing) to permit you to transfer your copy to someone else. Of course you can't give a copy to two people unless you have two licenses.
There are two cases to distinguish: information that the other party does not want to give without court order, and information that the other party may not give without court order. Only the former case matters, of course, since the latter by definition requires a court order. So, if the other party is legally capable of giving the information, but it's commercially not sensible for them, then you'll need to sweeten the deal. And that's business, not a legal question anymore. In other words: there's no legal instrument that's at the same time equal to a court order but also different from one. When you need a court order, there's no alternative to a court order.
You certainly can't legally steal anything, ever. If it is legal, it is not stealing. In particular, if it is your property, it isn't stealing. The question is really, "is it your property"? This will be jurisdiction dependant. I am familiar with England and Wales, and other common law jurisdictions may be similar. The fact you co-signed for the car definitely does not make it your property. It just means that out of the goodness of your heart, you agreed to reduce the finance company's risk by promising to pay if your ex-friend didn't. In E&amp;W, I don't think it is possible to register a car jointly, but there is a long page explaining that the registered keeper is not necessarily the owner of the car. My guess is that the car probably does not belong to you, so if you take it you will probably end up with a conviction for theft.
Yes, it's illegal new-south-wales s118 of the Crimes Act says: Where, on the trial of a person for larceny, it appears that the accused appropriated the property in question to the accused’s own use, or for the accused’s own benefit, or that of another, but intended eventually to restore the same, or in the case of money to return an equivalent amount, such person shall not by reason only thereof be entitled to acquittal. QED
You are not obligated to pick the thing up, but you are obligated to pay. Analogously, if you go into a restaurant and order a steak, you are obligated to pay for it, but you are not obligated to eat it. You can cancel the steak order within some reasonable short period of time (maybe a minute) – it depends on whether they have relied on your acceptance of their offer, and have done anything that puts them in a worse situation (such as "started cooking it"). You could have informed them that you decided that you didn't want the thing and they might have been able to cancel the order with no or minimum cost to you (depends on whether your job was simply "in the queue", or had they done something like ordered parts or detrimentally committed an employee to some schedule so that other customers could not be serviced). Once you accept their offer, you have an enforceable contract. The additional information about lateness of delivery doesn't clearly change the situation. If there were an explicit "time is of the essence" clause in your contract, related to any delay causing harm, then failure to meet a deadline could constitute a breach of contract. For example, if you have a contract where you will be transported to a location by a specific deadline so that you can get on the boat, failure to meet that deadline causes material harm (if you miss the boat, you suffer a loss). You apparently do not have any such clause, and there's no indication that you suffered a loss because of the delay in delivery. A reasonable delay would not be interpreted as the other party breaching the contract.
The idea is that, by default, we should assume the payment is a gift, unless we have specific evidence to suggest that it is offered in exchange for something. In the first case, the father-in-law has given no indication as to why he is giving her the money. It could be that he is indifferent to whether she remarries or not, and simply wants her to have a steady income in either case. He may be presuming that, if she remarries, her new husband will be able to provide for her, but until such time, he (the father-in-law) will pay her way. We certainly do not have evidence to show that he actually wants her to stay unmarried and is paying her for that purpose. In the second case, the father-in-law has given us more evidence. His words make it explicit that he does want her not to remarry, and that he is paying her in order to get her not to. Since he is clearly paying money with the intention of getting another party to do something (or in this case, to refrain from doing something), we understand it as a contract.
Reading the examples from the ftc site what they mean is if someone sends you a good (intending for you to be the one who owns it) and asks you to pay for it, then it counts as a free gift If a good was accidentally sent to you but intended for someone else, then you keeping the good is theft.