Recovery of gift through civil lawsuit
<p>Say I give someone a vehicle and have preexisting credit card credit that I use to buy it. Then, I want the vehicle back.</p>
<p>Can't I just do this:</p>
<ol>
<li><p>Tell a lawyer to buy my debt</p>
</li>
<li><p>Lawyer sues me for conveyance</p>
</li>
<li><p>Lawyer takes the car</p>
</li>
</ol>
<p>Would this work?</p>

<h2>You can't give away a car you don't own.</h2>
<p>The auto loan lender will have a lien on the car. The &quot;someone&quot; you give the car to <strong>will not have the title</strong>. That will be readily obvious when they have no interaction whatsoever with the DMV.</p>
<p>So, it will be no secret to the recipient that the car <em>isn't theirs</em> and can be expected to disappear at any time.</p>
<h2>Paying with a credit card does not create a lien, though</h2>
<p>When you borrow from a credit card, that creates unsecured debt.  Whatever you buy is yours free and clear, including the car.   The car will have clear title.</p>
<p>If you give your car to &quot;someone&quot; then either you sign over the title, or you don't.  If you don't, see above.  If you do sign over the title, then kaboom. Done deal.</p>
<p>There isn't really a way to go after the car after you sign it away.</p>
<p>The lawyer can buy your credit card debt, and the lawyer will be able to go after your assets in all the usual ways.  Your car is no longer an asset of yours, but the lawyer can go after all your other assets using the normal methods for doing so.   The lawyer can take non-essential assets, or can garnish your wages.</p>
<p>The only way to &quot;clawback&quot; the car is if you were insolvent - unable to pay the money back - and the lawyer can show <strong>you knew</strong> you would be insolvent, and went on a spending spree knowing you wouldn't be able to pay it back. The same thing would happen if  you maxed out your credit cards for a gift to the United Way knowing that was irresponsible. The United Way would have to give back the money.</p>

<p>You have debt to the credit card company, say $5,000. The credit card company expects that you pay the money back, with interest. If a lawyer approaches them and says “I want to buy Ingrahams debt” they will say “we don’t do that kind of business, go away”.</p>
<p>You can ask the lawyer to lend you $5,000 that you use to pay back your credit card debt. The lawyer will say “I don’t do that kind of business”.</p>
<p>If the lawyer agreed to your scheme (which has nothing to do with their profession), what would be in it for them? They have to find the person with the car (work = money), take the car away (lots of work = money), hope it is in a good shape, sell the car to make money (work = money). And they have to trust you that the story is true and there is a car. There’s the risk the story gets out and damages the lawyers reputation (I personally wouldn’t want that guy to ever represent me).</p>
<p>So this can only work if you find a lawyer with no reputation to lose, and it will cost you lots of money.</p>

gift