Possessions of deceased

stormbreaker

Yorkshireman99 wrote: »

You have missed the point!.

Eh no! The police attend and the partner shows evidence of having paid for the phone or for the phone contract which is more likely these days from her bank account and she disputes ownership! Civil!

If it was a car that he owned before meeting her but she shows that she has paid for the up keep and repairs, dispute of ownership! Civil.

It doesn't matter how you tart up the story, if they have lived together and shared things, monetary or otherwise she has a claim. If the next of kin come along and make claim they dispute the claims in a civil court not criminal.

In one sentence you say the value whether it be £5 or £5,000 it would still be theft. You then contradict yourself by saying, it really comes down to value?

Value is of no importance whether civil or criminal, so irrelevant.

I think we should leave it here as we are never going to agree.

Jenniefour

Confusing. OP has now added to the original post:-

"Ok my brothers wife left him for someone else. No hard feelings on either part we still see her the children and his wife's family. We all got on fine. Obviously got on with the girlfriend and were there for her also. All I have asked for is a phone which my brother promised his son and his wife was giving the daughter here. I have asked for nothing else. She has flatly refused. Until that point we all got on. Thank you".

I'm not surprised the phone hasn't been handed over. That was a promise he made, as parents do, and he was probably planning to give it to the children when he replaced it. The situation has changed in the worst possible way for everyone. If you think there are any photo's on that phone his children would like then ask her - there will be a way of getting copies by uploading them onto a computer.

Keep_pedalling

Jenniefour wrote: »

Confusing. OP has now added to the original post:-

"Ok my brothers wife left him for someone else. No hard feelings on either part we still see her the children and his wife's family. We all got on fine. Obviously got on with the girlfriend and were there for her also. All I have asked for is a phone which my brother promised his son and his wife was giving the daughter here. I have asked for nothing else. She has flatly refused. Until that point we all got on. Thank you".

I'm not surprised the phone hasn't been handed over. That was a promise he made, as parents do, and he was probably planning to give it to the children when he replaced it. The situation has changed in the worst possible way for everyone. If you think there are any photo's on that phone his children would like then ask her - there will be a way of getting copies by uploading them onto a computer.

For such trivia, this is not worth perusing. If the phone is full of pictures of the deceased and his girlfriend I can understand why she is holding on to it, but even if that is not the case then again the grief involved in following this through is simply not worth it.

Yorkshireman99

stormbreaker wrote: »

Eh no! The police attend and the partner shows evidence of having paid for the phone or for the phone contract which is more likely these days from her bank account and she disputes ownership! Civil!

If it was a car that he owned before meeting her but she shows that she has paid for the up keep and repairs, dispute of ownership! Civil.

It doesn't matter how you tart up the story, if they have lived together and shared things, monetary or otherwise she has a claim. If the next of kin come along and make claim they dispute the claims in a civil court not criminal.

In one sentence you say the value whether it be £5 or £5,000 it would still be theft. You then contradict yourself by saying, it really comes down to value?

Value is of no importance whether civil or criminal, so irrelevant.

I think we should leave it here as we are never going to agree.

No contradiction. Theft is theft. The value comes into it when the question of police involement is discussed. As I said before de minimus.

stormbreaker

Theft is the felonious appropriation of the property of belonging to another.

Where in the circumstances described is the 'felonious appropriation' .

I know very little about civil law but know a lot about criminal law.

Yorkshireman99

S1 of the Theft Act 1968 defienes it as

"A person is guilty of theft if he dishonestly appropriates property belonging to another with the intention of permanently depriving the other of it; and “thief” and “steal” shall be construed accordingly."

marliepanda

Yorkshireman99 wrote: »

S1 of the Theft Act 1968 defienes it as

"A person is guilty of theft if he dishonestly appropriates property belonging to another with the intention of permanently depriving the other of it; and “thief” and “steal” shall be construed accordingly."

But for that you need to establish that the phone 'belongs' to the wife and children as NOK.

There is no clear cut ownership. My brother works for a phone company so I get cheap rates, so both of mine and my partners phones are in my name paid by me (though he pays for his to me) so technically, theyre both mine?

If they pay from a joint bank account, it would be hard to tell.

At the end of the day its a gadget, not a keepsake. As its flip flopping between a phone promised to a child (in event of death, unlikely...) and small pieces of clothing as a keepsake. OP can't keep the story straight so how are we to judge who owns what.

Yorkshireman99

marliepanda wrote: »

But for that you need to establish that the phone 'belongs' to the wife and children as NOK.

There is no clear cut ownership. My brother works for a phone company so I get cheap rates, so both of mine and my partners phones are in my name paid by me (though he pays for his to me) so technically, theyre both mine?

If they pay from a joint bank account, it would be hard to tell.

At the end of the day its a gadget, not a keepsake. As its flip flopping between a phone promised to a child (in event of death, unlikely...) and small pieces of clothing as a keepsake. OP can't keep the story straight so how are we to judge who owns what.

I agree with your last sentence and have repeatedly said that the OP has not given sufficient information. However, you responded to my quoting the definition of theft and then hypothesised about just what we don’t know that does not really matter. Unless the OP will give some facts then we are all wasting our time.

Margot123

Detracting from whether this a theft or not, I can see why a phone would be so important.
When my Dad passed away, I found his cheap 'big button' mobile (he was 81). I scrolled through his texts and found several that he must have thought he'd sent to me but hadn't, they had gone to a wrong number. He had a stroke and was unable to speak on the phone.
Those texts, although trivial to anyone else, were of great value to me. I was able to read what my Dad wanted to tell me while he was dying. No one can put a value on that.