Do I have a case?

What is the name of your state? ny, ny
At the time my finacee and I were in the market for a car a friend of ours mentioned that she was \looking for someone to take over the payments of her vehicle in essence purchasing it. She was a few months behind in payments and the car was on repossesion so the we paid the past due and took the car. after a year she calls and says she wants her car back, but she feels she does not owe me back the year worth of payments plus the money I paid as a "downpayment" which was to cancel the repo. Her argument is that the agreement is that the payments were to be made on time everymonth and we messed up her credit up by having late payments. we did run into some issues and the car went into repo while in our possesion bbut it was taken care of. At the time she asked for the car back all was in good standing. I want to sue her for the money because my argument is that at no point in time was the agreement that if payments were late, she would take back the car. I gave her the vehicle because legally it is in her name, however i do have proof of what i paid into it. I don't want the car back because I had to buy a car. I couldn't take the risk of being without a car. Do I have a case?

How much would it have cost to rent the car for the same period? Likely a lot more than what you paid.

What happens when people do stuff like this? No one knows. Try to come up with what is fair because court will cost both parties more than what the dispute is worth.

She isn't right. But, what is?

but...

much more ofcourse, however why would pay all that money on a car to give it back when i needed a permanent vehicle in the first place? If things were behind i could understand maybe but everything was up to date. I'm a young mother in an area where you need a car. It just so happened that I was looking to buy and she needed to be saved so I did. But as I stated there was never any mention of if a payment is late i will take the car back. she didn't say anything like that until she found out she'd be getting a settlement from a previous car accident. now she wants to take it back, pay it off. There was no, you pay on the car until i get my stuff together agreement. this was a purchase agreement

You can tell more facts and it won't change anything. You have done things in a non-legal way. You have no written agreement (as required by the statute of frauds). You have no clear verbal agreement. You have nothing. She has nothing. What do you think a court will decide? How much time/hassle/expense will that court decison take? This is a SNAFU which happens when people try to do things privately without spelling out exacly what the deal is. Even in your first post you wrote "in essence purchasing it". The essence of this "deal" and a few bucks will get you a cup of coffee.

Try to cut a deal with the person. Apparently, what you thought was the deal was not what she thought. Even if she is lying, I have no idea how a court would decide except that the likelyhood that *either* of your positions would be enforced is unlikely.

I guess it depends...

I guess it depends on the judge and testimony because I know of a case where a friend of mine was in the same situation. The judge ordered the person who's name was on the car to give it back. The problem with that is when it was time to re-register the vehicle and he contacted the owner, they refused. Since he could not legally drive the vehicle he stopped paying on it. It is not at all my intention to keep the car at this point. I just feel I should be entitled to have my money back. Thank you very much for you advice.