The Cruse He Left Behind

About This Talk

Chapters 4 through 6 of Hilchot Zechiyah u'Matanah govern when a gift becomes irrevocable, who may take hold of it on the recipient's behalf, and how a court reads a giver who never stated his intent. Chapter 4 rules that once a recipient has acquired he can no longer retract, and that a refusal uttered afterward renders the gift ownerless so that the first taker acquires it, while a protest from the outset returns it to the giver; a third party who performs the act of ownership acquires for the recipient without his knowledge, since a benefit may be conferred without consent and an obligation may not; the case where the recipient heard, stayed silent and only later protested is left unresolved, with the consequence that property is not expropriated from whoever holds it; instructing an agent to acquire or to give is final while instructing him to bring is retractable until delivery, and a giver who dies first is still obeyed because it is a mitzvah to carry out the instructions of the deceased; the acquirer must be past majority and competent, a gentile never qualifying, and a child who keeps a nut and discards a stone acquires only for himself; a safeguarded courtyard and the four cubits beside a man acquire for him while an unguarded field requires his presence and declaration; words cannot be relayed by messenger as with a bill of divorce, and a deed reading that he gave transfers on delivery while one reading that he will give transfers nothing. Chapter 5 requires every gift to be made publicly and conspicuously, voids a deed that does not record the instruction to write it in the market place and the streets, treats a discovered hidden gift as a protest that voids a later public gift as well, as in the incident of the man who deeded his estate secretly to his son and then openly to the bride who demanded it and left both with nothing, and sets the rules for competing documents: same date with no recorded hour goes to the judges' discretion, a kinyan decides by whichever was performed first, a gift followed by a sale to the same person is strengthened rather than cancelled, and two documents of the same kind with nothing added means the second nullifies the first and resets the produce and the royal levy. Chapter 6 reads unstated intent from what the giver retained: a father who signs everything away on a report of his son's death loses the gift when the son returns alive unless he kept property back, assigning the whole estate to one of several sons or to a wife is read as an executorship unless something was retained, though not where it is one son among daughters or a consecrated woman or a divorcee; a wife who receives the whole estate forfeits her ketubah and the document is torn, with exits preserved where he gave only movables or retained land, and a Geonic enactment extending that to retained movables; a woman who signs her property away before marrying recovers it on divorce or widowhood unless she retained something; gifts sent home from overseas are allocated by what suits sons and daughters; a father who marries off his eldest son in a designated house transfers the house, a ruling the Rambam calls one that resembles a halachah instituted without a reason, unless he left even a small cruse of his own inside; and consecration money is never returned while betrothal presents are, except food and drink, for which a retracting bride pays four zuz of six by the Geonim and the whole cost of a customary engagement feast where the groom has witnesses to the expense.