Engagement rings are a good example of how personal property issues can sometimes become quite complicated in a divorce.<\/p>\n
Long, long ago (okay, back in 1941), the Virginia Supreme Court looked at the issue of \u201cwho gets the ring<\/a>\u201d and found that a husband could recover the value of his engagement ring if his soon-to-be wife broke off the parties\u2019 engagement.<\/p>\n \u201c[I]f an intended husband makes a present, after the treaty of marriage had been negotiated, to his intended wife, and the inducement for the gift is the fact of her promise to marry him, if she break off the marriage, he may recover from her the value of such present\u2026\u201d<\/p>\n This case (Pretlow<\/em> v. Pretlow<\/em>) espouses the \u201cconditional gift\u201d theory.\u00a0 That is, the engagement ring is a gift conditioned on a marriage actually taking place.\u00a0 If the condition is not met \u2013 if the marriage does not occur \u2013 the gift is forfeited and the ring must be returned.\u00a0 Many states, including Maryland, view engagement rings as conditional gifts.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Virginia, of course, must be different.\u00a0 In 1968, the Virginia General Assembly enacted Virginia Code \u00a7 8.01-220, which prevents individuals from suing each other for \u201calienation of affection\u201d and \u201cbreach of a promise to marry.\u201d\u00a0 Subsequently, several Virginia circuit courts (including one as recently as 2006) have found that because a husband cannot sue for breach of a promise to marry, he similarly cannot sue for damages relating to that breach, including the value of the engagement ring.<\/p>\n Though in 1999 the Fairfax County Circuit Court ordered an engagement ring be returned where it was \u201csubject to an unusual conditional gift in that the wife received it not on the condition of marriage but upon promise to return it in the event of separation,\u201d the weight of current authority suggests that absent some other condition, promise or agreement, an engagement ring is an unconditional gift.\u00a0 Once given, it isn\u2019t coming back (by court order).<\/p>\n Notwithstanding the law, there are often good and fair reasons for returning the \u201c3-month\u2019s salary\u201d ring and many clients are able to successfully have their rings either returned or preserved for their children.<\/p>\n If you have questions about property division in Virginia<\/a> or whether that engagement ring is rightfully yours, call the experienced Fairfax divorce attorneys<\/a> at Curran | Moher P.C. at (571) 328-5020.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Engagement rings are a good example of how personal property issues can sometimes become quite complicated in a divorce. Virginia Engagement Ring Law History Long, long ago (okay, back in 1941), the Virginia Supreme Court looked at the issue of \u201cwho gets the ring\u201d and found that a husband could recover the value of his […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":834,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20,39],"tags":[38,40,41,42,43,44],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.curranmoher.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/833"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.curranmoher.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.curranmoher.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.curranmoher.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.curranmoher.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=833"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.curranmoher.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/833\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3395,"href":"https:\/\/www.curranmoher.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/833\/revisions\/3395"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.curranmoher.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/834"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.curranmoher.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=833"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.curranmoher.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=833"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.curranmoher.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=833"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}The Conditional Gift Theory Doesn\u2019t Hold in a Virginia Divorce<\/h3>\n