“I’m passing this on to you, son. You know how how much I loved old Nibbles.”

As I have mentioned here before, I give ethics advice to inquirers on AllExperts.com, when the rare individual can actually find “ethics” among the categories—it’s buried somewhere under “philosophy,” which is doubtlessly why so many of my questions are from students who want me to write their homework essays for them. (I decline, but a lot of experts on the site don’t. A topic for another time…)

Today I received a question on one of those difficult family problems that any of us could face. The writer’s elderly father, with some ceremony, gave his only son one of the father’s most cherished possessions, something that had sentimental value to the father that far exceeded its monetary value, which was considerable. “I recently moved into an apartment,” the writer explained, “and after rent and bills, I only have about $200 a month to live on.” He said he could barely afford food, and had an urgent need for clothes, shoes, and other essentials, so he sold the heirloom for a pretty penny.

Now his father is heartbroken, and his mother is furious, demanding that he get the heirloom back, or else she won’t speak to him again. He wrote that he was depressed, and doesn’t know what to do.

The dilemma of the cherished heirloom that means more to the giver than to the given is deceptively complex. There can be no realistic obligation to treat one’s own possessions in a manner than someone else would approve of, but these treasures handed down by parents and grandparents are often naively given under the assumption that the recipients will naturally have the same reverence toward whatever it is as the original owners do. Often, they don’t; in fact, often they can’t understand what the heck the big deal is.

My sister and I just went through the awful task of cleaning out the home of my parents, who are recently deceased. They both kept everything. We found the pressed flower my father gave my mom on their first date; letters, anniversary gifts from a half-century ago, and a lot more. These were all cherished items, and it felt wrong, somehow, to discard them. Luckily, my sister has no such pangs. “Throw it out— it’s junk,” she kept saying. Or, as in the case of the vintage 78 rpm recording of my parents’ wedding song, Irving Berlin’s “Always” (“I’ll be loving you…Always!”), she said, “Let’s see what that will bring on eBay.” The thought of such callous disposal of the landmarks of their 63 year-long romance would have killed my parents…but then they are dead already.

The inquirer, I have to say, should have heard an ethics alarm sound when his Dad said, “I’m giving this thing that I love to you,” because what he meant was “I’m entrusting this treasure to you; take good care of it.”  Recognizing this would require the question to be asked, “Can I do whatever I want with it?”  The gift had an unstated, presumed condition attached, and the son should have sensed it.

He didn’t, however, and his father gave him the gift without specifying his expectations. As I told the son, it was not wrong to sell something that was now his property. Having sold it, and sold it for good reasons (don’t you think shoes and clothes are a good reason?), his problem wasn’t ethics any more, it was family crisis damage control.

My rule is that giving in to emotional extortion is like bargaining with terrorists: don’t do it, ever. It just encourages more of it. The mother is out of line, and should be told so. She should not be allowed to prevail with her threats.

This is a misunderstanding with enough blame to go all around. The father gave something away that he wasn’t really willing to lose entirely, and didn’t make his needs, intentions and conditions clear. The son should have played a little ethics chess and considered what was likely to happen if he accepted the gift and then had to sell it. Both need to apologize to the other, not for doing anything wrong, but for the part each played in creating the family rift.

The lesson? When you know you are receiving a gift of something with special personal significance to the giver, either resolve to treat is as the giver would treat it himself until he’s no longer in a position to be hurt, or make sure that the giver knows, and agrees, that you might sell it, give it away yourself, or chuck it out the window. If you’re the one bestowing an heirloom or treasure on someone, don’t assume that he or she will want to guard it, revere it, worship it, or even store it, if that’s important to you. The magic words are, “I am giving you this, which is very important to me, on the condition that you take good care of it. If you can’t promise me that you will do that, then I will give it to someone else.”

Then if the recipient hocks it to buy lottery tickets, it is a clear breach of trust.