Imagine your soon-to-be fiance gets on one knee after a romantic golf-club dinner and holds out a 70,000 dollar ring. You happily accept the Tiffany wedding band and plan a wedding for the next year.
In that year, though, your relationship starts to show some holes, and the engagement falls through. This is the story of Bruce Johnson and his ex-fiance Caroline Settino. And this would be a totally normal scenario, but Settino did not return the ring.
Johnson broke off the engagement after a few months because Settino was verbally abusing him. When she kept the ring, Johnson claimed that the proposal was a verbal contract.
Let’s break that down.
There are three parts to a contract: An offer, an acceptance, and a consideration (what each side stands to gain from the agreement). Technically, Johnson was correct. In order for Settino to fulfill the consideration part of the contract, she could either marry Johnson, or give the ring back. The Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court must now decide if this verbal contract is legally binding, or if Settino is free to do whatever she wants with the ring.
If we consider the ring a symbol of a mutual agreement, shouldn’t it at least be returned out of courtesy?
There are two ways states consider this situation. Either the ring is a conditional gift, where it must be returned if the couple breaks up, or it’s an unconditional gift – the opposite of the preceding – where the ring does not need to be returned even if the engagement is broken off.
Legally, Massachusetts sees engagement rings as conditional gifts, so who keeps the ring depends on who ended the engagement and why. The court blamed Johnson for the breakup and granted Settino the 70,000 ring.
For future engagements, this case may be monumental. It may mean that engagements are more binding if there’s a more expensive ring. It may discourage breaking off engagements or purchasing valuable wedding bands. Ultimately, it reminds us that marriage is not only a social commitment, but a financial and legal one too.
