LOVE & RELATIONSHIPS
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Who Keeps the Engagement Ring After a Breakup? 2 Law Professors Explain Why You Might Want a Prenup for Your Diamond BY NAOMI CAHN & JULIA D. MAHONEY THE CONVERSATION
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hen Jennifer Lopez and Ben Affleck got engaged the first time, in 2002, he gave her a very pricey ring. That engagement ring was reportedly worth as much as $2.5 million, made by luxury jeweler Harry Winston and adorned with a 6.1-carat pink diamond. After the movie stars broke up in 2004 without getting married, J. Lo said she intended to return the ring “quietly” to Affleck. Whether or she ever did that or not, was Lopez entitled to keep the that rock or any of the others she got from her numerous ex-husbands and former fiancés? The answer can matter to anyone who is engaged, married – or even thinking about tying the knot. No one knows for sure how many engagements end in a breakup, although there are estimates that roughly 1 in 5 do so.
Are they arguing over who gets to keep the ring? As law professors who teach property and family law, we frequently talk to students – and our own relatives – about gifts and marriage. Students often ask us who owns the engagement ring if couples don’t get married or if they eventually divorce. They also want to know what happens if the ring is stolen.
Analysis of the world, from experts While taxes, laws and insurance are not very sexy topics, marriage has never been only about romance. It’s also a partnership with economic repercussions. Rare before the 20th century Engagement rings were fairly rare until
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about 100 years ago, even though the first diamond engagement ring was apparently given by Emperor Maximilian to Mary of Burgundy in 1377. But it wasn’t until the end of the Great Depression that a sophisticated advertising campaign created a market for diamond engagement rings in the United States. By 1940, 10% of brides received diamond rings. That share jumped to 80% by 1990. Perhaps propelled by the belief that a ring should cost as much as a man earns in three months, expensive diamond engagement rings grew in popularity from 1935 to 1965. No recourse for jilted grooms Law professor Margaret Brinig has found that legal changes coincided with the new customs around the mid-20th century. Specifically, Brinig points to the abolition of the lawsuits known as “breach of promise” actions, which could be filed after broken engagements. That is, brides could keep rings – even expensive ones – without getting married. This new convention, Brinig has written, could have served as a form of compensation if the bride had lost her virginity after getting engaged. Should the marriage not happen, she’d at least have something of value to hold onto. No-fault engagements? In the second half of the 20th century, U.S. divorce laws changed, and courts stopped determining who was to blame when married couples broke up. In what came to be known as no-fault divorce, neither spouse had to prove the other had cheated or been cruel to them. And, as law professor Rebecca Tushnet documents, many courts have applied a similar “no-fault” framework to broken engagements. That means it doesn’t matter who broke it off, or why. In addressing that rule in 1997, three judges on a Pennsylvania superior court drew on the story of Adam and Eve, meandered into Roman times and then announced “the gift of the ring to [the bride] at the time of their betrothal was subject to an implied condition requiring its return if the marriage did not take place.” And that was in a case in which a man who had proposed to his girlfriend called off the engagement twice. Courts in Iowa, Michigan, Minnesota, Mississippi and other states have issued similar rulings. continued on page 19
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