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

When 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.

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 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.

Engagement Ring/ continued from page 18

Different states, different stakes

But the Supreme Court of Montana held in 2002 that an ex-fiancée could keep her engagement ring after a breakup. Noting that women “often still assume the bulk of pre-wedding costs,” the court expressed concerns that treating engagement rings as gifts conditional upon marriage could perpetuate gender bias.

And a Texas court ruled a year later that someone who gave an engagement ring to his fiancée and then later called off the wedding was not entitled to its return.

In California, a state law enacted in 1939 provides that the ring must be returned if the marriage is broken off by mutual consent or the person who received an engagement ring initiates the breakup.

Regardless of where you live, if you’re legally obligated to return an engagement ring and fail to do so, you may be on the hook for monetary damages. This can lead to financial hardship when rings are lost, stolen or intentionally thrown away.

Tax consequences

If one person keeps the ring after a breakup, there may be gift tax consequences for the person who bought the ring. But that’s only if the ring costs more than $17,000, and there are a lot of vari- ables and loopholes that can reduce the chances that a jilted ex would ever owe any money to the Internal Revenue Service.

Anyone can make gifts worth up to $17,000 per year, as of 2023, to anyone else without incurring consequences. Gifts worth more than that threshold are officially subject to a gift tax, and the IRS requires that taxpayers report the amount of those gifts annually.

As of 2023, taxpayers also may give away gifts totaling $12.92 million during their whole lifetimes, or after death in their wills, with no tax-related consequences.

But gifts of $17,000 or more will eat into that credit.

Planning ahead

Anyone who gets engaged can insure a ring.

And while no readers should see this article as a source of personal legal advice, we do note that engaged couples can set their own rules. Courts will generally enforce written agreements reached between two people who plan on getting married that stipulate who gets the ring after a breakup.

Couples can draft or sign a ring-related contract, particularly if that piece of jewelry has great sentimental or monetary value.

We understand that such paperwork might not materialize during a time of bended knees and joyful celebration. We also get that what people do with their rings when an engagement is called off isn’t just a matter of what the law requires.

Few such lawsuits

Perhaps not surprisingly, we have found relatively few cases in which someone sued an ex over this issue.

Not even Ben Affleck did that. Had he tried to sue J. Lo in 2004 in a California court, he might have won. But his success would have turned on how the engagement ended.

Besides, as you may have heard, the high-profile couple reunited in 2021 and married in 2022.

The second engagement ring Affleck gave Lopez is reportedly worth $5 million – probably double that of the first one. J. Lo gets to keep that huge, rare green diamond forever now that she’s saying her name is Mrs. Jennifer Lynne Affleck.l

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Tourism Resilience/ continued from page 1 currency import under the guidance of this driven man.

Today, he was interviewed at UN headquarters in New York City at the HighLevel Political Forum’s (HLPF’s) official side event on Economic, Social, and Environmental Sustainability in Tourism, where he explained what tourism resilience is truly all about. The question posed to him was:

In this context of championing tourism resilience, can you share with us the challenges and opportunities that you are facing as a tourism minister to put tourism front and center in efforts for achieving the SGDs.

His Response

When I think of the relationship between tourism and the SGDs, these key issues of sustainability come to mind- social inclusiveness, gender equality, inclusive economic growth; community development, decent work; poverty reduction; resource efficiency, environmental protection and cultural and heritage retention.

The tourism sector has demonstrated its enormous potential to deliver results in relation to several of these goals. In the context of Jamaica, tourism remains one of the most labor-intensive sectors of the national economy and generates jobs not only in the sector, but through its value chain in many other sectors such as cultural industries, agriculture, construction, manufacturing, transportation, entertainment, handicrafts, health, financial services or information and communication technologies. Indeed, Tourism is the lifeblood of many marginalized rural communities in Jamaica where it is often the only viable economic sector generating mass employment for residents and income opportunities for micro, small and medium-sized enterprises. Ultimately, by keeping thousands of Jamaicans employed and earning wages that stimulate consumption in the broader national economy, tourism is a significant catalyst of poverty reduction.

The tourism sector also promotes social inclusiveness and inclusive economic growth by generating a wide range of employment opportunities for Jamaicans across all age ranges, skill levels, educational levels, social and economic classes and geographical locations. These persons are employed in diverse areas such as concierge, reservations, food and beverage, operations management, information and technology, human resource management, accounting and cost control, grounds & maintenance, entertainment, transportation, housekeeping, security etc. Also, since more than 60 % of tourism workers are women, the sector also contributes positively to the economic empowerment of thousands of women, especially rural women, who would have otherwise had limited avenues for income generation.

An Island Nation Exemplifies Tourism

Jamaica’s tourism product is also considerably culture and heritage-based. Its mass appeal lies in its expansive range of cultural/heritage assets that have been converted into tourism products and offerings such as national landmarks, heritage sites, museums, festivals, music, art and craft, local cuisine. This ultimately means that the competitiveness and sustainability of the country’s tourism product is crucially linked to the preservation and protection of indigenous cultures and heritage.

Notwithstanding these positive attributes of the country’s tourism product, I will be the first to admit that there are long-standing challenges that present implications for the transition of the tourism sector to sustainability. The tourism product remains largely undiversified. Resort development in still heavily concentrated in coastal areas; revolving around the “sand, sun and sea” concept. Consequently, the tourism sector continues to place a heavy burden on dwindling land-based and marine ecosystems. The pace of transition to the adoption of renewable and green energies is admittedly slow and the tourism experience is still largely built around the promotion of laissez faire practices that emphasize excessively indulgent and unlimited behaviors among tourists, which doesn’t necessarily bode well for the promotion of goals linked to environmental sustainability such as sustainable consumption and resource conservation. Generally, tourism development in SIDs such as Jamaica typically highlight the difficulty of balancing economic development with environmental sustainability since the tourism product in these countries is considerably based on the exploitation of depleting natural resources.l

This is an excerpt.

Read the full story at cawnyc.com

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