Is a text message legally binding regarding a gift?
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Is a text message legally binding regarding a gift?
My fiance committed suicide and did not have a Will. He has a grown daughter and a minor child as well. He sent a text to his best friend minutes before he took his life giving me his pick-up truck. At first there was no dispute over the truck but now I am getting the cold shoulder from his oldest child. I need to know what, if anything I can do to get the truck.
Asked on January 17, 2016 under Estate Planning, Illinois
Answers:
SJZ, Member, New York Bar / FreeAdvice Contributing Attorney
Answered 8 years ago | Contributor
No, a text message that someone will give you a gift is no more binding than an oral promise: either may be freely reneged on, since neither is a contract. (For it to have been a contract, *you* would have had to have given or been promising to give him something for the truck, such as paying for it or exchanging some other property for it; without "consideration," or something of value offered by you, this was not an enforceable contract.) If he had actually transferred title to you prior to passing that would be different--the truck would be yours. But merely making a promise to give you the truck is not enforceable.
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