Rules of Engagement

Abstract

In 1997, millionaire John Lattanzio sued model Ines Misan for the return of half a million dollars in gifts he had given her, allegedly in the hope that she would marry him. The scandal died down when they settled, Misan keeping gifts worth $210,000 and returning an engagement ring worth $290,000.' The settlement probably replicated what a court would have done,2 which raises the question: Why does the law treat engagement rings differently from other gifts? The answer is rooted in a history in which courts generally entertained litigation over broken engagements. As legislatures slowly abolished actions for breach of promise to marry in the early and middle decades of this century, on the grounds that such actions were inconsistent with modem understandings of love and marriage, one potential fact pattern for successful plaintiffs emerged: the case in which a man sues a woman for the return of his engagement gifts. The history and logic of this body of law-the rules of engagementinvite examination. Most discussions of the role of the law in regulating marital relations assume that the law begins its control at the time of the marriage ceremony. The state prescribes who can marry, and how; the state also determines the terms upon which marriages can be dissolved. The assumption is that the law's effects on premarital behavior are indirect consequences of this post-ceremonial regulation. Most analyses of family law do not recognize the direct regulation of premarital behavior as a part of the no-fault regime that has grown up around marriage. This failure to examine premarital law has prevented commentators from evaluating the ideas about property embedded in the current premarital legal regime, particularly the gendered consequences of that regime. It has also encouraged legal analysts to consider questions of the definition of property and the nature of promises to marry as settled and irrelevant to other areas of the law. This inattention is a mistake. It should be no surprise that