But consider the case of George J. Pavlicic, a 75-year-old man, who had a romance with Sara Jane Mills, aged 26. They became engaged in 1949. He bought her a house, two cars, an engagement ring, and a diamond ring in anticipation of their marriage. George then lent her a significant amount of money, including $5,000 to buy a saloon. Sara Jane then disappeared. The next time she was heard from, she had indeed used the $5,000 to buy a saloon, but it was in another city, and she had married another man.

George went to court. He wanted everything that he'd given Sara Jane back. He won. But Sara Jane argued on appeal that a new law, the Heart-Balm Act, made his lawsuit illegal, because it outlawed all legal actions for "breaches of contract to marry." But the Pennsylvania Supreme Court sided with George. The act, it held, was meant to end a kind of legal blackmail, where people threatened lawsuits for breach of the promise to marry that would tarnish the other person's reputation. But the act, the court concluded, didn't alter the rule of conditional gifts. Pavlicic v. Vogtsberger, 136 A.2d 127, 130 (Penn. 1957).

Some courts applying this fault-based rule consider the exchange of the ring to be more like a contract than a conditional gift: The ring is just a symbol of the agreement to marry. If that agreement is not performed, then those involved should be restored to their former positions -- as they would be if the contract was for, say, the delivery of a bushel of wheat -- and the ring should be returned to the person who first had it. But if the donor backs out, the donee should keep the ring, because a person who breaches contracts should not be rewarded for doing so. Spinnell v. Quigley, 785 P.2d 1149 (1990).