Famspear wrote:Clue: Your first post indicates that you came here to stir up a "hornet's nest", as you put it.
Mr. Eastman wrote:Just my being here does that.
Ah, so when you go even further and actually bless us by posing your questions, it's just like
icing on the cake for everybody, isn't it?
As others have noted here, Dale, the answer to your question is: Yes, it is legally possible for you to give something to someone else that
you yourself do not possess.
In fact, in a narrow, technical, legal sense, it is possible for you, a private individual, to direct a disposition of property when you don't even
own the property yourself (I'm not talking about the government taking someone's property or anything like that).
For example, let's think about a trust (an arrangement whereby one person, called a trustee, holds legal title for the use and benefit of another person, called a beneficiary). Let's say that Bob is the Trustee and Mary is the beneficiary of our trust. It is legally possible in certain circumstances for the trust to have been set up so that an individual -- let's call him Joe (who is neither the trustee nor the beneficiary of the trust) -- to direct that the ownership of certain property in the trust be transferred to someone else, even though Joe has no legal right to the property himself, and has no right to transfer the property to himself, to his own estate, to his creditors, or to the creditors of his estate.
Dale, do you know what Joe "has" here? Do you know the technical legal term for what Joe has here?
"My greatest fear is that the audience will beat me to the punch line." -- David Mamet