If I try the swing today and it is safe (with my weight, and with my use of the swing) trying my hardest to see if it will break and it does not, then the next day you come by and you sit on it and it breaks am I liable?<p>Should I have judged my test as &#x27;inability to figure out if it was safe&#x27;?<p>Nothing short of a destructive test will tell you exactly what load a swing like this will support, but common sense will tell you to be careful with tree swings <i>regardless</i> of whether or not someone tells you that it is safe. It&#x27;s a non-engineered project probably made on a budget (even though in this particular case the tree swing had <i>chains</i> rather than rope so it was constructed fairly well) and it ended up being the tree trunk that snapped rather than the branch the chains were attached to.