Who Owns Your Badge?

[MysticCat]

I can certainly be corrected, but I would hazard a guess that in most every national GLO, the member owns the badge regardless of what the national organization says. That is to say, a national org can say all it wants to that the badge must be returned to HQ upon a member's death, but as a legal matter the badge belongs to the member unless it was made clear at the time that the new member paid for the badge that it was just "on loan."

Efforts to say that badges must be returned to HQ seem to be a fairly recent (say, post-eBay) phenomenon (as well as one fairly limited to women's GLOs) and could not legally apply to anyone initiated prior to implementation of such a policy. And unless a new member agrees at the time of "purchasing" the badge that ownership of the badge remains with the national org and further agrees to make sure that the badge is returned to HQ upon death, such policies are, at best, only morally, not legally, binding.