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When Does an Engagement Ring Have to Be Returned?
Fault for the Break-Up
When divining who gets to keep the engagement ring, courts do not agree on whether it should matter who did the breaking up or why. To some judges, it isn't fair that the donor should always get the ring back, especially if the donee stood ready to go ahead with the marriage and the donor broke it off. These same judges think it would be unfair for the donee to keep the ring if the engagement was broken because of the donee's unfaithfulness or other wrongdoing. In such cases, they order that the ring should be returned to its purchaser. This "fault-based" rule is the majority approach.
Other judges, though, think that the whole matter of who broke up with whom isn't any of their business. If the wedding's off, they say, the donor should get the ring back, regardless of who, why, where, or when the engagement ended. After all, they reason, 'no-fault divorce makes it possible for marriages to end without bitter court fights over whose fault it was; engagements should be treated the same way.
Just a few years ago, the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania stuck steadfastly to the no-fault reasoning and decreed that the donor should always get the ring back if the engagement is broken off, regardless of who broke it off or why. Lindh v. Surman, 742 A.2d 643 (Pa. 1999). Iowa, Kansas, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, and Wisconsin have the same rule.
Justices on the Supreme Court of Kansas, which also adopted the no-fault rule in 1997, detailed the difficulties that they imagined would be theirs with a fault-based approach:
[S]hould courts be asked to determine which of the following grounds for breaking an engagement is fault or justified? (1) The parties have nothing in common; (2) one party cannot stand prospective in-laws; (3) a minor child of one of the parties is hostile to and will not accept the other party; (4) an adult child of one of the parties will not accept the other party; (5) the parties' pets do not get along; (6) a party was too hasty in proposing or accepting the proposal; (7) the engagement was a rebound situation which is now regretted; (8) one party has untidy habits that irritate the other; or (9) the parties have religious differences.
Heiman v. Parrish, 942 P.2d 631, 637 (Kan. 1997).
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