Is It Wrong to Give Money With Strings Attached?
Kwame Anthony Appiah www.nytimes.com kwame-anthony-appiah
The magazine’s Ethicist columnist on conditional gifts.
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My partner and I are good friends with a man who is a single dad and a wonderful parent. His income is low, he has substantial debt and money is a chronic source of stress for the family, though he owns their modest home. We have given him unsolicited small-to-medium monetary gifts over the years and have offered to be his no-interest lender of last resort in emergencies. He has taken us up on that a few times and reliably made installment repayments.

The family’s kitchen is in such poor structural condition that aspects of it are unusable. By their own report, their life would be considerably more enjoyable with a partial remodel. My partner would like to give him the substantial sum he needs for the repairs with the stipulation that it be used for that. I also would very much like them to have a functional kitchen, but my priorities may not be the same as our friend’s. He might want to use the money to pay down debt, splurge on the kids or anything else he may decide.

I think it would be controlling and demeaning to give this money with strings attached. I would be comfortable with saying: ‘‘We think this is what a partial kitchen remodel would cost. Please use it for that or for whatever you prioritize.’’ My partner says that making this present conditional on the kitchen remodel would be no different from giving this family a new car or a generous gift card at a niche store. But I say that if our friend had other priorities, he could at least sell the car or buy items at the store and resell them. We jointly own all of our assets, so this would be a collective decision. What do you think? — Name Withheld

From the Ethicist:

Can we think more about the car analogy? Suppose you’ve talked about your need for a new sedan. Maybe you’ve had your eye on a particular model. It’s just that you don’t have the cash to buy it. Mary, your prosperous and generous friend, has that model delivered as a birthday present. Would you have reason to take offense?

Perhaps the gift presupposes that she’s richer than you are, but you’ve never made any bones about that. And she has previously used her bigger bank account to your advantage without roiling the relationship. Generosity does put you in a kind of moral debt to the donor, but this only has to be a problem if that debt becomes the basis for lording it over you.

So the gift needn’t be demeaning. As for controlling: Well, in giving you the car rather than the cost of the car, Mary has made a choice for you. Maybe it’s not what you would have done with the money. Send the car back, if you want. But if you accept it as a gift, you ought to take it in the spirit in which it was given. A friend meant to help you out by providing you with something you had a use for.

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