Is this considered a gift?

[bbcourt]

What is the name of your state?IN

I was given an engagment ring...he broke it off...is he legally entitled to my ring since it was a gift from him?

 

[MandyD]

You might want to look at this link: http://family-law.freeadvice.com/engagement_breakup_ring.htm

It doesn't address your state and I can't find anything where IN directly addresses this issue, but most states consider an engagement ring a gift in contemplation of marriage and in those cases the ring is returned regardless of who called off the wedding.

Maybe a fellow Hoosier will know the specific answer for IN.

 

[BelizeBreeze]

What is the name of your state?IN

I was given an engagment ring...he broke it off...is he legally entitled to my ring since it was a gift from him?

Give the ring back unless you want to spend just as much as it costs to defend keeping it when he files against you in court.

 

[BelizeBreeze]

AND FURTHERMORE:

Just so you have an idea of what you will be facing:

In the absence of unjust enrichment or inequities crying out for restitution, both of which are difficult to find when courts must shy away from fault determinations, courts must explain why the machinery of justice should be mobilized to reverse a transfer of property.

As the specter of the adventuress retreats further into an unfamiliar past, and the contrary idea that one person is never the sole cause of a relationship's end gains currency, courts now rely most heavily on a particular vision of no-fault, grounded in the law of conditional gift.

Conditional gift theory holds that a gift given subject to a condition, which usually must be explicit, can be recovered when the donee fails to fulfill that condition. Where engagement gifts--mostly rings--are concerned, courts have been willing to imply the condition of marriage.

Conditional gift theory alone, however, is insufficiently detailed to justify the recent results in engagement ring cases. A conditional gift could be returned either on a fault or a no-fault basis, and the courts' choice of conditional gift as the theory most compatible with no-fault principles invites further analysis.

Conditional gifts cannot in general be revoked when the donor changes his mind, as long as the donee has taken steps to perform the condition. This would seem to imply a fault-based analysis, letting the woman keep the ring when she did not break the engagement. Even were the theory to require complete performance, however, there are two possible ways to define the condition to be performed: Either the condition is the donee's willingness to marry, or it is the marriage itself.

Thus, denominating a ring a conditional gift does not specify under what conditions it must be returned. As one court recently noted, the increasingly dominant rule regarding engagement rings simply differs from that controlling other conditional gifts: Rather than following the more common practice of defining the necessary condition as the donee's willingness to comply with the donor's wishes, courts in the engagement context define the condition as the actual occurrence of the marriage. Indeed, the proposed Restatement (Second) of Restitution treats broken engagements as exceptional cases, deserving a special rule, just as the first Restatement did.

The existence of a law of conditional gifts thus cannot simply be invoked to explain the ring-return rule, since that law is itself shaped to cover the engagement situation. When courts in ring cases declare that they must modify the law of conditional gifts to reflect the difficulties of determining fault, the initial reason for invoking conditional gift theory--the idea that the intent of the parties was best expressed by the concept of a gift conditioned on marriage--becomes suspect. In the second-best world of no-fault, letting losses fall where they lie might come closer to the intent of the parties than a mandatory rule of return.

Conditional gift theory in no-fault courts relies on a contestable determination of the parties' presumed intent. The problem that courts face is that people may not expect that the rules of engagement are no-fault, and so it may be necessary to choose between enforcing expectations and avoiding difficult, intrusive examinations of the disintegration of relationships.

Not everyone agrees that engagement rings are implicitly conditioned on marriage. Many people apparently hold to a fault-based morality, or even to a belief that engagement gifts belong to donees absent special circumstances. If expectations vary, courts may be misdescribing the actual state of the world when they find a no-fault conditional gift implicit in any engagement.

Now, do you understand better what you would be arguing in front of a judge? If not, go here for the complete test of the comparitative study on the law.

 

[SunChaser]

BeliezeBreeze, you obviously are versed in this kind of thing. I am in need of assistance. I got engaged in California, then moved to Florida to live with my then fiance. Things were terrible and the engagement was ended a little over four months later. She has refused to return the $16,000 engagement ring. She told me to sue her if I want it back. What should I do?

Thanks in advance.

AND FURTHERMORE:

Just so you have an idea of what you will be facing:

In the absence of unjust enrichment or inequities crying out for restitution, both of which are difficult to find when courts must shy away from fault determinations, courts must explain why the machinery of justice should be mobilized to reverse a transfer of property.

As the specter of the adventuress retreats further into an unfamiliar past, and the contrary idea that one person is never the sole cause of a relationship's end gains currency, courts now rely most heavily on a particular vision of no-fault, grounded in the law of conditional gift.

Conditional gift theory holds that a gift given subject to a condition, which usually must be explicit, can be recovered when the donee fails to fulfill that condition. Where engagement gifts--mostly rings--are concerned, courts have been willing to imply the condition of marriage.

Conditional gift theory alone, however, is insufficiently detailed to justify the recent results in engagement ring cases. A conditional gift could be returned either on a fault or a no-fault basis, and the courts' choice of conditional gift as the theory most compatible with no-fault principles invites further analysis.

Conditional gifts cannot in general be revoked when the donor changes his mind, as long as the donee has taken steps to perform the condition. This would seem to imply a fault-based analysis, letting the woman keep the ring when she did not break the engagement. Even were the theory to require complete performance, however, there are two possible ways to define the condition to be performed: Either the condition is the donee's willingness to marry, or it is the marriage itself.

Thus, denominating a ring a conditional gift does not specify under what conditions it must be returned. As one court recently noted, the increasingly dominant rule regarding engagement rings simply differs from that controlling other conditional gifts: Rather than following the more common practice of defining the necessary condition as the donee's willingness to comply with the donor's wishes, courts in the engagement context define the condition as the actual occurrence of the marriage. Indeed, the proposed Restatement (Second) of Restitution treats broken engagements as exceptional cases, deserving a special rule, just as the first Restatement did.

The existence of a law of conditional gifts thus cannot simply be invoked to explain the ring-return rule, since that law is itself shaped to cover the engagement situation. When courts in ring cases declare that they must modify the law of conditional gifts to reflect the difficulties of determining fault, the initial reason for invoking conditional gift theory--the idea that the intent of the parties was best expressed by the concept of a gift conditioned on marriage--becomes suspect. In the second-best world of no-fault, letting losses fall where they lie might come closer to the intent of the parties than a mandatory rule of return.

Conditional gift theory in no-fault courts relies on a contestable determination of the parties' presumed intent. The problem that courts face is that people may not expect that the rules of engagement are no-fault, and so it may be necessary to choose between enforcing expectations and avoiding difficult, intrusive examinations of the disintegration of relationships.

Not everyone agrees that engagement rings are implicitly conditioned on marriage. Many people apparently hold to a fault-based morality, or even to a belief that engagement gifts belong to donees absent special circumstances. If expectations vary, courts may be misdescribing the actual state of the world when they find a no-fault conditional gift implicit in any engagement.

Now, do you understand better what you would be arguing in front of a judge? If not, go here for the complete test of the comparitative study on the law.

 

[racer72]

BeliezeBreeze, you obviously are versed in this kind of thing. I am in need of assistance. I got engaged in California, then moved to Florida to live with my then fiance. Things were terrible and the engagement was ended a little over four months later. She has refused to return the $16,000 engagement ring. She told me to sue her if I want it back. What should I do?

Thanks in advance.

Please don't hijack the threads of others, it is very rude. Start your own thread.

 

[absconder]

16 grand? I hope she was good in bed for 16k.

 

[SunChaser]

She wasn't. I have been asked to start my own thread. I'll give the rest of the details there.