Yeah, never get financially involved with boyfriends. If anyone ever asks you for financial assistance, it's a warning from God to walk away.
-Yea, I have learned the hard way.
Oh, about the current deadbeat. You can sue him. You might even win. But odds are that you'll never see a penny of your money.
-I am trying to find out how to file a civil law suit pro se. The amount is too large for small claims court.
I dislike dissuading you from your efforts but given only what you have provided I don't see that you have a sustainable cause of action (legal claim/lawsuit) against the ex-boyfriend.
To begin it's rather obvious that if you hadn't become disenchanted with the relationship, for whatever reasons, you wouldn't be seeking legal assistance.
Secondly, motive aside, you haven't alluded to any event or incident giving rise to a recognizable cause of action. In legal jargon it means that you haven' stated a factual foundation or set of transactional circumstances for which the law affords legal relief. Not every wrong is righted in a court of law.
At best would be his telling you that he was going to trade in the truck
to get you your money. Even as irrational as it is (trading the truck for something else rather than selling it) it could only suffice as a conditional promise to get you your money and from a specific source.
Furthermore, if relied on as a promise to pay it would fail in court
for lack of certainty. Such as
when to pay and to pay what! The court would never fill in these crucial blanks.
The point I'm attempting to make here is that even if you were to survive the motion phase of your proposed lawsuit, he would never have need to present evidence in support of a defense that you gifted the vehicle as a down payment on
his truck. (Which I believe was your precise purpose.)
At the end of your case in chief (for reasons stated above) your claim would be dismissed with prejudice. Meaning it could never be reasserted in any form.
