Can she get the money back?

[SRod]

My best friend and her husband are worried sick and I think they are worrying unnecessarily but would be interested in others opinions.
My best friends mother came into a very large inheritance and gave my best friend and husband who have a small child a large lump sum to pay off some of their mortgage which they have now done.

Since doing this, the relationship has really soured and I think this mother felt like she had full control over then since she had given this money and it got to a point that whatever she said went whereas couple of weeks ago she behaved so terribly, that my best friend decided she would rather have no contact.

As they have reduced their mortgage with the funds and have since being paying less per month it would place them in a financially dangerous position to give her back the funds if she tries to claim them.

I think that a gift is a gift and cannot be revoked whereas they are worried that she could spin a story to say it was borrowed money and although nothing is written to say it is borrowed, nothing is written to say it was a gift either. Just the common sense that they put the funds in into their mortgage and they haven't repair her anything since so from where I look at it, it looks like an obvious gift but even so, with it being a large amount, can she claim it back?

Please don't respond about my friends decision as this will not mentally help her, only about whether the mother can claimit back.

Many thanks

I don’t think she can claim it back as she gave it willingly.

If she can’t prove it was a loan, with a repayment plan and everything in place then she can’t get it back. Let her crack on with her nonsense and tell your friend to ignore.

Is there anything in writing (email, text, anything at all)?

@Mum2Fergus they is nothing in writing to say it was a gift but nothing to say it was a borrow either. It was given as a gift and at the time the relationship was good so it felt kind of inappropriate to make her write out that it was a gift. The only evidence is that she gave them the lump sum- they paid it into their mortgage and haven't done any repayments to her so that would indicate gift and as she has nothing written to say it was a borrow it seems unlikely she could get anywhere with this but I'm just trying to settle them

There is no paper trail. No proof of what it was given for. Mother hasn’t got a leg to stand on. She’s lost more than her money with her attitude it seems.

I’d imagine she has no route to claim it was a loan in that case.

The only likely route would be if the mother claimed that she was coerced into giving it and went down a fraud / elder abuse route.

@ScaryM0nster yes I see what your saying..I'd imagine she have to evidence that aswell though and being as she is still working and she didn't give all of the inheritance over I think she'd look capable to make her own decisions so doubt it'd pass.

Hopefully anyway!!! 😊

Nothing to worry about. A gift is a gift unless there's a contract to say otherwise. Also, I assume there's no bank trail of regular payment to the DM to pay back. It won't be financially worth the DM's while to even try and take this to court.
It's very sad though, seeing 'love' as transactional (the DM). I guess there's a lot more to this story.

All very sad, at the end of the day, mother was helping daughter, so it shouldn’t matter, she will have difficulty proving money was anything other than a gift, if there’s nothing in writing, but a reminder to anyone who gets gifted money, make sure you have something in writing to say it’s a non returnable gift and not a loan.