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Nov 11, 2024

Mass. high court says $70,000 engagement ring must be returned to giver if wedding called off • Rhode Island Current

A diamond engagement ring in the display case of Tiffany and Co. in Boston. (Photo by Jennifer Smith/CommonWealth Beacon) BOSTON — In a unanimous decision on Friday, the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial

A diamond engagement ring in the display case of Tiffany and Co. in Boston. (Photo by Jennifer Smith/CommonWealth Beacon)

BOSTON — In a unanimous decision on Friday, the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court held that an engagement ring must be returned to the giver if the marriage never takes place, overturning the state’s long-held rule that the ring should go to whomever is not “at fault” for the breakup.

The decision puts a button on a buzzy case about the legacy of gendered laws hidden in a suit over a $70,000 engagement ring.

“We now join the modern trend adopted by the majority of jurisdictions that have considered the issue and retire the concept of fault in this context; where, as here, the planned wedding does not ensue and the engagement is ended, the engagement ring must be returned to the donor regardless of fault,” Justice Dalila Wendlandt wrote for a unanimous court.

Bruce Johnson and Caroline Settino dated, got engaged, and broke up when the relationship soured amidst claims of poor treatment and suspected infidelity. A messy lawsuit then ensued, with Johnson taking Settino to court to reclaim the engagement ring and two wedding bands he had purchased, and her countersuing for dental surgery he allegedly promised to pay for but tried to renege on.

The state high court concluded that the Tiffany solitaire diamond ring must be returned to Johnson.

Though Massachusetts in 1938 abolished so-called “heart balm” claims, which women could bring over broken engagements, the state’s high court allowed a carveout in 1959’s De Cicco v. Barker case for claims that would return an engagement ring to the giver. At the time, married women had only just been permitted control of personal property and allowed some additional right to divorce. Men were still generally the purchasers and givers of engagement rings, and they wanted them back if an engagement fell through.

Under the De Cicco case and court decisions since then, Massachusetts courts have applied a fault-based conditional gift test to engagement rings. Unlike a gift of a bracelet or a car, engagement rings are traditionally conditioned specifically on a promise of marriage in most states, and a broken engagement leaves the ring up for grabs. Under Massachusetts common law – that is, court decisions deciding how the law should be applied – the giver gets the ring back unless he or she is “at fault” in the breakup.

But both parties in this case argued that fault is a terrible way to decide ring ownership. Justices would either have to apply a strict “whoever breaks up was ‘at fault’” assessment, or else go rooting around in details of the couple’s separation for clues. An Appeals Court justice who considered the case described doing so as “unseemly.”

The SJC noted that courts have long struggled with the “inherent difficulties in

assigning responsibility for a prenuptial breakup,” referring to a case where judges considered difficulties with in-laws, hostility of one party’s minor child, pets that cannot get along, untidy habits, religious differences, the absence of a sense of humor, differing musical tastes, or couples just plain finding out they ultimately don’t like each other anymore.

Massachusetts, like many states, has adopted a no-fault divorce rule, but until Friday was in the minority of states with specific engagement ring law that imposes a fault test on broken engagements. Several factors cut against considering fault, the court wrote, including the purpose of engagements to test out the concept of marriage without legal strings attached.

Wendlandt concluded that, “as a result of these considerations, the modern trend, and now majority view among courts that have considered this issue, is that the only relevant inquiry in conditional engagement gift cases is whether the condition under which the gift was made – that is, the marriage ceremony – has failed to occur.”

By issuing its decision, the court overturned more than 60 years of precedent, something justices are leery to do.

They assessed whether De Cicco’s rationale is “consonant with the needs of contemporary society,” determining that the decision actually embroiled courts in exactly the kinds of analysis the laws overturning heart balm claims tried to eliminate. Changing to a “no-fault” rule would be a better fit with the modern divorce standard, Wendlandt wrote.

But the court’s changes stopped there. Justices opted against taking up Settino’s claim that the state should do away with the “conditional” gift rule entirely.

Assuming the engagement ring is conditioned on marriage and should be returned, Settino’s lawyers argued in court, is part of a sexist legacy of exchanging a woman’s promise to marry for a thing of value. Settino suggested two tactics to keep control of the ring – either say that a gift is a gift regardless of promise to marry, or find that Johnson signaled that this particular ring was an unconditional gift because he gave her receipts along with the rings.

Though the justices appeared interested in the subject during oral arguments, they ultimately waved it away. It was customary for Johnson to give Settino recipes for gifts, the record showed, and didn’t necessarily indicate an intent one way or the other. All but one other state court considers engagement rings conditional, Wendlandt wrote, and Massachusetts would side with the majority of them.

“This near universal understanding of engagement rings as gifts inherently conditioned on a subsequent marriage leads us to conclude that we must stand by our conclusion in De Cicco that an engagement gift is a conditional gift,” Wendlandt wrote.

This article first appeared on CommonWealth Beacon and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.

by Jennifer Smith, Rhode Island Current November 8, 2024

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Jennifer Smith is a staff reporter at CommonWealth magazine. A California native by way of Utah, Jennifer has spent the last 12 years in Boston, covering Massachusetts news for a variety of publications. She worked breaking news in the Boston Globe’s metro section and provided courtroom coverage of the Boston Marathon trial for the international wire service Deutsche Presse-Agentur (DPA) while completing her undergraduate journalism degree at Northeastern University in Boston. For four years, Jennifer worked as a staff writer and later news editor for the Dorchester Reporter, covering her home neighborhood and the city of Boston with a particular focus on politics and development.