Hi Tracy,
>>Let's say your neighbor has a canalization problem. Sometimes there are pieces of your garden under water. Why not give him a few hundred bucks to specifically fix this ?

>No, it would be better to pay for the repair or pay a portion of the repair costs directly to the contractor rather than to your neighbor.

But even that implies some "risk" if no "contract" between the neighbours has been reached: there might be other's not remembering a promise to pay...

>The judge basically said in effect that when money is given as a gift you have no say over its use.

Comes back to my(our?) point: no government should be free to make gifts from tax money - and yes I know you could also say they are trying to buy votes. ;-)

>You cannot specify what the money will be used for unless you pay for a service and receive a receipt for the funds. If you want to specify that it go for a specific purpose then he should have paid the tree removal service directly and not his neighbor. He was basically out 200.00

Since me contracting anybody to remove something on the neighbour's property probably needs a "meeting of the minds", I'ld expect some previous talk to have happened. And over here there is something which babelfish translates into "tied donation" [zweckgebundene Schenkung]. You can use the funds only for the purpose, and this will even influence the way such a transaction is taxed. So the thing IMHO missing is the provable contract/arrangement - but who am I to argue against TV judges, especially on US law and intricate semantics of "gift" ;-)

regards

thomas