Demands for Repayment of Gifts and Harassment From a Former Partner

Attorney Answer

You generally do not owe repayment for completed gifts, and the fact that her total kept changing — from around $3,500 to roughly $6,300 plus 24% interest — itself shows there was never an agreement on what, if anything, you owed.

In Pennsylvania, what protects you is that these were completed gifts — not the absence of a signed agreement. A gift that has been delivered with donative intent is yours, and it generally cannot be clawed back because the giver later regrets it. Do not rely on the lack of a writing: under 42 Pa.C.S. § 5525(a)(3)-(4), Pennsylvania gives a party four years to sue on "an express contract not founded upon an instrument in writing" and on a contract implied in law, so oral-loan and unjust-enrichment claims are actionable here. Her running list of "charges" reflects her own accounting, not an enforceable debt, because no agreement of any kind — written or spoken — was ever reached on repayment or on 24% interest. Your one statement that you'd consider paying for flights, once itemized with receipts, was a tentative offer that was never finalized — not an admission that you owe everything else she's claiming — though the flights are the one item she could realistically press, so keep that itemization-and-receipts condition in writing. Her repeated threats to send police to two residences in two different states may themselves amount to criminal harassment under Pennsylvania law: Pennsylvania Consolidated Statutes § 2709 makes it criminal to act with intent to harass, annoy, or alarm another through a course of conduct serving no legitimate purpose, threatening communications, or repeated contact, which can cover this kind of escalating demand.

What you can do:

1. State once, in writing, that you dispute the amount and will not pay interest or unitemized charges, then stop engaging further.

2. Keep records of every message, call, and threat in case you need to support a harassment complaint.

3. Ask a local Pennsylvania attorney whether a Protection From Abuse order could apply here — it's a plausible but uncertain option given the relationship, and worth raising with counsel.

4. Understand that a disputed, undocumented debt is a civil matter that police do not normally enforce, and that knowingly filing a false police report can itself expose her to liability if she follows through on the threat.