Wedding gift clawback

I'll have been to quite a few weddings by the end of the year. And for each of them I will have bought gifts, usually from the wonderful invention that is the Online Wedding List. I don't mind buying presents, but I think that when the bride and groom accept the present, they are entering into a covenant with me, much like they are with each other. The way I see it, they are committing to stay together for a decent length of time (technically forever). If they break this promise and get divorced after only a few years then I think I should be entitled to get back a portion of my gift or the equivalent monetary value.

This might seem a bit mercenary, but remember that if one of those divorcees then marries again, I would be expected to buy more gifts. They would be fleecing me simply because of their own inability to hold a long term relationship together. Taken to the extreme they might marry and divorce once a year for the rest of my life. This could prove very expensive for me.

So I think it would be fair that should a break-up occur within the first five years, I should get some kind of refund from the not-happy-anymore couple.

I've been thinking of ways in which this could be structured financially, and how to work out how payments could be structured between the two parties.

Perhaps the easiest way might be for the value of each item to be written down linearly over the five year period. On break-up within this time, a payment could be made to me equal to the remaining value of the item. If the divorced could not pay this, I could accept payment with the item itself. This would then give added incentive to always choose gifts from the wedding list that I'd like to receive myself (a bike). Disadvantages here would include having to rely on a divorced person (who is inherently an evil sinner) to pay me what I was owed, and it might also give me reason to try and split up the couple just so I could get my nice thing back.

A better method would be one where I retained legal ownership of all or part of the gift until the end of the five year period. With a gift of a set of cutlery, for example, this could be done by giving them the cutlery piece by piece. Another month, another spoon. Whilst this would be good from my point of view I could see that an incomplete cutlery set might be somewhat inconvenient for its users. I'd also need to find storage room for the outstanding cutlery in my flat. Not so bad if it's just one wedding, but if there were five or six it could get onerous. My cutlery drawer is not infinite in size.

So I think then my favoured method would be to give gifts on a some kind of contractual basis. One way it might work could be:
1) I would choose a gift as normal.
2) All gifts would be initially paid for in full by the future Mr and Mrs.
3) A contract would be drawn up with a payment schedule that I would have to pay for the next five years. These payments would cover in full the cost of the gift, plus a small interest payment linked to the bank base rate.
4) I would sign the contract before the wedding.
5) I would then make the assigned payments on the stated dates.
6) If divorce occurred, no future payments would be owed by myself, and the couple could keep the gift. (Ideally payments would stop at the first time the marriage showed signs of being in trouble, but I think this might be pushing my luck a little.)

This would have then a similar effect to the first approach I described above but would put me on much more solid legal and financial ground.

Now, you might come along to me and say that this last method is unfair since the bride and groom would have to stump up for thousands of pounds of gifts at outset, a time when they already have to pay out for the wedding and honeymoon. I say to that: Screw 'em! Not my problem! Let them take out a loan with the local gangsters. Hell, I'll lend them the money if they're desperate (at a suitably punitive rate of interest)!

The only people who could possibly have a genuine problem with this scheme would be prospective marryees who didn't expect it to last. People with nothing to hide would embrace this as an addtional sign of their commitment to one another. So, in fact, by enacting this the divorce rate could be slashed. It might lead to a spike in divorce rates at the fifth anniversary, but I think the overall rate would be lowered.

In the meantime, I'd better go and find my credit card.