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Question: What can a shul or mikvah do if it finds itself overloaded with aveidos that people left there?

Answer: If they already have been koneh it, they are stuck with it. However, if whoever has jurisdiction over the premises had in mind not to acquire it, and it is only picked up after the person who left it there is meya’esh, they can keep it. However, that is often not the case. Often, whoever left it there completely forgot about their item, without ever being meya’esh.

Going forward, some Poskim suggest that the problem can be rectified by putting up a sign that anything left on the shul property becomes hefker after a reasonable amount of time. This would only work if the sign is hung in a prominent place so that people know it is there and presumably agree to abide by it and allow their items to become hefker.

Furthermore, the sign would only work for things that are normally left behind. If someone’s passport fell out of his pocket and got lost, it would not become hefker, because the sign would not absolve the shul from returning things that the owners wouldn’t expect to leave behind. For such things, they would have to be returned like a regular aveidah.

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Rav Baruch Fried

Question: I was in a supermarket and found $10 in front of the customer service counter. I picked it up, saw that there was no siman, and was about to take it for myself. The storeowner saw me pick it up and said that it belongs to him since it was found on his property. Do I have to give it to him?

Answer: If the money was behind the counter – in the place where customers do not normally go – it would belong to the storeowner because his chatzer would acquire it for him.

However, if the money was found in front of the counter – in a place where there are customers – the Mishnah says that the finder can keep it if it can be assumed that the owner was meya’esh before he picked it up. The Rishonim explain that the store’s chatzer is not koneh because it is not protected, and only a protected property is koneh items without the owner’s knowledge. Other Rishonim explain that the chatzer is not koneh because the owner was not yet meya’esh when the item first fell there, as he obviously wasn’t yet aware that he dropped it. By the time the finder picked it up, however, the owner was already meya’esh, so he is allowed to keep it.

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Question: In my development, there are many scooters, coats, toys, etc., which were obviously dropped by children. Do I have to pick up and return all of these lost items?

Answer: The truth is that anything knowingly entrusted to a child has the status of an aveidah m’daas. The Mishnah in Bava Basra (87b) discusses a case where a parent sends a child with a jug to purchase oil from a storekeeper. If the jug falls and breaks on the way home, the Mishna says that the storekeeper is liable to pay for it. The gemara there explains that if the storekeeper would have simply filled the jug and sent the child on his way, he would not be liable. The reason the Mishnah says he is chayav is that it is specifically referring to a case where the storekeeper first used the jug for his own purposes, thereby becoming a shoel shelo m’daas. Since a shoel shelo m’daas is considered a gazlan, the storekeeper now has an obligation to return the jug to its owner. If it breaks before being returned, he is liable.

Both the Ketzos Hachoshen and Nesivos Hamishpat conclude from this sugya that one is not obligated to protect something that a parent entrusts to a child. Although one cannot take the item for himself, he also is not responsible to guard it.

If the parents entrust an item to the child, no one else is obligated to protect it any better than they did. If the parents know that a child may lose or break an object they give to him, and they decide to give it to him anyway, they have accepted that something may happen to the object and no one else is responsible to do more than they did by returning the object to them.

Therefore, one would not be obligated to return a coat, toy, or scooter that was given to a child. Of course, if the object is in a place where someone may trip over it he should move it to the side, but there is no mitzvah of hashavas aveidah.

Question: What if someone already picked it up?

Answer: He can still put it back down. It is clear from the Rishonim there that when parents entrust an object to a child, they accept that no one is obligated to return it to them, even if they already picked it up.