Lord of the ring

Pop quiz: If a wedding is called off, who gets the ring?

Some of you probably believe it should stay with the recipient. The engagement ring is a gift, after all.

Others will argue that the ring goes back to the giver - because the wedding never happened.

So, who's right?

I'd say you give it back, because that's what's classy and just. And according to the law, I'm right - which probably means that Bryan Rosen, who filed suit in Connecticut Superior Court last month seeking the return of a $25,000 engagement ring, will win, unless his ex can prove she deserves it.

What kind of ex-couple winds up in court over an engagement ring, you ask?

Surprisingly (to me, at least) there have been many lawsuits involving engagement rings, both nationally and in Massachusetts. The law goes state-by-state, and in the Commonwealth, engagement rings aren't considered a gift. They're more like a down payment on a contract. If the contract is broken and the marriage never happens, the goods go back.

"The ring is a conditional gift," says Veronica Fenton, cochair of the Massachusetts Bar Association's Family Law Section Council.

Or, as Boston family lawyer Barbara Macy says: "The engagement ring is for a purpose; the purpose is not the gift."

This goes back to the 1959 Massachusetts case of De Cicco v. Barker, in which George De Cicco fought to get a number of rings back from his ex, E. Adele Barker. The court ruled that Barker could keep all the rings except the one that was considered the engagement ring. The promise of marriage wasn't fulfilled, so the ring wasn't hers to keep.

Since then, most suits have been decided in favor of the giver, here and in other states. Last year in Chicago, a woman was ordered to return a 5-karat diamond ring.

Upon hearing this news, she told the local paper, "He can have his ring" and "he can shove it as far as it goes." Talk about classy.

Of course, there are exceptions to the ring return rule. If you ask for your sweetie's hand on Christmas or his/her birthday, he/she might be able to successfully argue in court that the engagement ring doubled as a gift. So think twice if you're planning to pop the question this holiday season.

Another exception to the De Cicco v. Barker precedent happens when the giver of the ring has behaved like a total jerk. Let's say he/she cheats. The court might side with the ring recipient, says Thomas J. Barbar, Fenton's cochair.

"They look at why the marriage didn't take place," Barbar says. "If he had a conjugal visit with the maid of honor a month before the wedding, then he isn't coming into court with clean hands."

The court is big on clean hands. Take the 2006 case of Bowzer v. Daly, in which the Massachusetts Superior Court ruled that a woman had to return the ring to her ex-fiance specifically because she had hit him.

"It was undisputed that it was she who struck him, and the Court finds that this blow, rather than anything that he did, was the precipitating cause of their break-up," the decision read. "In these instances, he is entitled to have the ring returned." Without abuse or serious financial losses on the part of the recipient, the consensus is: The ring gets returned.

And that's how it should be. It's not only good taste - like giving wedding gifts back if the wedding is canceled - it's also the best closure: Do you really need the souvenir? Daniela Marcoccia, the defendant in this new case out of Fairfield, Conn., will probably learn all of this soon enough.

Marcoccia should know that by giving back the ring she won't be walking away empty-handed. As Fenton says, she should just "be glad you didn't marry the guy for 20 years."

Meredith Goldstein can be reached at mgoldstein@globe.com.