Opinion ID: 886147
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 4

Heading: Abolition of Breach of Promise Actions

Text: ¶ 26 Historic breach of promise jurisprudence tended to view an engagement ring as either a pledge of personal property given to secure a marital promise or as consideration for the contract of marriage. See 44 A.L.R. 5th 1, §§ 8 and 9. When a contract to marry was abrogated, the jilted lover could seek redress in a breach of promise action that sounded in contract law, but availed the plaintiff of tort damages. The law allows punitive or vindictive damages to be assessed by the jury; and all the circumstances attending the breach before, at the time, and after may be given in evidence in aggravation of damages. Dupont v. McAdow (1886), 6 Mont. 226, 232, 9 P. 925, 928. The plaintiffs were almost invariably women seeking economic relief for themselves, compensation for pregnancy and material support for children of the relationship. Whatever heart balm was awarded to assuage lost love, ruined reputation or foreclosed opportunities to marry well rest[ed] in the sound discretion of the jury. Section 8685, RCM (1935). ¶ 27 By the mid-1930's, several state legislatures questioned the efficacy of court interference with domestic relations and passed statutes barring actions for breach of promise to marry, alienation of affections, criminal conversation and other inappropriate conduct of the private realm. See Rebecca Rushnet, Rules of Engagement (1998), 107 Yale Law Review 2583, 2586-91. Commentators noted all of these actions afforded a fertile field for blackmail and extortion by means of manufactured suits in which the threat of publicity is used to force a settlement. W. Page Keeton et al., Prosser and Keeton on the Law of Torts (5th ed.1984) § 124 at 929. There is good reason to believe that even genuine actions of this type are brought more frequently than not with purely mercenary or vindictive motives [and] that it is impossible to compensate for such damage with what has derisively been called `heart balm.' Prosser and Keeton, § 124 at 929. ¶ 28 In the wake of anti-heart balm statutes that barred breach of contract to marry actions, courts heard a plethora of legal theories designed to involve them in settling antenuptial property disputes while avoiding the language of contract law. The results were mixed. Some courts allowed actions in replevin. See Vann v. Vehrs (2d Dist.1994), 260 Ill.App.3d 648, 198 Ill.Dec. 640, 633 N.E.2d 102 (to reclaim property which the other party allegedly no longer has a right to possess). Others entertained claims for restitution and unjust enrichment. See Wilson v. Dabo (1983), 10 Ohio App.3d 169, 461 N.E.2d 8 (to reclaim property transferred in reliance upon the promise to marry when the donor was the non-breaching party). Out of this legal morass, conditional gift analysis emerged as a popular way to resolve acrimonious engagement ring disputes. While some states pursue a fault-based determination for awarding the ring in equity, the modern wave aligns ring disposition with no-fault divorce property disposition and follows a bright-line rule of ring return.