Obligated vs Obliged

Think twice before you determine which word you would like adopt in your writing, legal drafting for particular. If you are a non native English speaker as I am, your chances of not getting confused are about as good as me getting laid by Miss Shanghai. I did a research on the usage of the two similar, in the senses of spelling, pronunciation and meaning, words and did not find myself anywhere and then posted the question at an English language web Blog, pain in the English, where it made a wave and attracted discussions and, to my surprise, controversies among the readers, most of whom are native.

Fortunately, another language lover, Casey, a native, eyed this post and wrote in detail at her blog, Bellatra write well. The topic was as well received as it was at Pain in the English. I think I've got some idea about the two confusing words, still without the right sense of playing with them delicately though.

Click here to see what Casey tells us.

And, other (not always necessarily different) voices to be heard at Obligated Vs Obliged:

"I feel obliged to disagree, but by no means obligated, as I clearly have a free choice to abstain."
Appealing to the Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary:

http://www.britannica.com/dictionary?book=Dictionary&va=Obligated

An obligation is a legal, moral or financial commitment. To me, this implies that you have no choice in the matter: Once obligated, you can't back out without serious repercussions.

http://www.britannica.com/dictionary?book=Dictionary&va=Obliged

To be obliged can mean required, but it can also mean to have an informal moral sense that you should do something. (The definition says "doing a favor.") To me, saying that "I'm obliged to do something" means that I could live with the consequences of not doing it. In other words, I have free choice to do it or not, and I choose to do it.