You need to think long and hard about giving thousands of dollars to someone. I don’t care if you believe they are the love of your life…anyone receiving thousands of dollars from someone else is not going to have the same kind of relationship with them as they would with somebody they have no financial strings attached to. There are relationships where both parties know the only reason they’re together is that one is giving the other an exorbitant amount of money, and both are okay with that. But unless you really know a person, you don’t know how your relationship is going to fare once a great deal of cash is involved. 

If you wouldn’t be financially okay if you took $20K out of your bank account and set it on fire, you have no business giving your girlfriend, boyfriend, sister, or mother $20K as a gift. It doesn’t matter if that money is going towards something important or valuable. Once you give it away, you don’t have any say in what happens to it, regardless of your relationship with the person.