Bruce Johnson and Caroline Settino started their whirlwind romance in the summer of 2016 after meeting at a bar in Boston.
The pair travelled the world together and Mr Johnson would regularly shower his partner with “luxury gifts”, culminating in a $70,000 Tiffany engagement ring late in 2017.
But after a dramatic split, Mr Johnson now wants the ring back – and it has triggered a massive legal fight that goes to the heart of modern break-ups.
Who gets to keep the wedding ring is now a matter for the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court, which on Friday will begin to consider arguments on who is entitled to keep it.
When he first sued his former fiancee in 2018 – the year the couple had planned to get married – Mr Johnson claimed their relationship began to break down when Ms Settino started to treat him like a child and would call him a “moron”.
Mr Johnson claimed that after a bad argument in November 2017, in which Ms Settino allegedly said she “could get a man whenever she wanted”, he saw texts she had sent to a man which read: “My Bruce is going to be in Connecticut for three days. I need some playtime.”
This prompted Mr Johnson to call off the wedding and take his former fiancee to court to get the ring back.
But Brockton Superior Court ruled in 2021 that Mr Johnson was wrong about his suspicions and was therefore at fault for their separation, awarding Ms Settino the ring and ordering him to pay tens of thousands of dollars for planned dental work he had promised her.
But their story didn’t end there. Mr Johnson appealed the ruling and in 2023, it was reversed by the Massachusetts Appeals Court. This judgement stated that while Mr Johnson may have been wrong about his affair suspicions, it did not necessarily mean he was at fault for the end of the engagement.
The court’s decision prompted Ms Settino to take the appeal to the high court “out of principle”, as she claims the ring as it was a gift, given to her with a receipt.
During her appearance at the appeals court last year, Ms Settino said her life “imploded” after Mr Johnson called off the wedding.
“I was a teacher, I had 60 people from my school coming to the wedding. We were putting them all up for two days at the resort, we had all sorts of things…so when he called off the wedding and said I was cheating, I was devastated,” a visibly emotional Ms Settino told the court.
The Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court will therefore not only decide on Friday who out of Mr Johnson or Ms Settino gets the $70,000 ring but also on whether to change state law on engagement rings.
Most state courts previously ruled that the giver of an engagement ring is entitled to its return so long as that person was not to blame for breaking the engagement, as Massachusetts’ top court did in 1959.
But now, a majority of states, including New York and Pennsylvania, treat engagement rings as a conditional gift that should be returned to the giver if the relationship breaks down before marriage – regardless of fault.
Critics say this perpetuates gender bias. “Absent the history of sexist suspicion of women, there would not be a special rule for the ring,” said Rebecca Tushnet, a Harvard Law School professor and engagement ring law expert.
“The ring is contingent on, ‘You’re with me, and as long as you’re with me, you’re mine,’” Ms Settino added. “That’s what I find archaic about the law.”
Mr Johnson, meanwhile, wants the court to maintain a no-fault approach.
The ring is currently being held by a third party until a decision is reached.
In the UK, an engagement ring is considered to be an “absolute gift”. This means that unless there were conditions attached by the giver, the receiver of the ring is generally entitled to keep it.
There may also be implied conditions. For example, if it was a family heirloom or had sentimental value.
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