When a Massachusetts man sued his ex-fiancée for a $70,000 engagement ring, the state's Supreme Court ruled that the ring should be returned to the buyer if the marriage is called off.

Massachusetts’s highest court reversed a longstanding ruling by saying an engagement ring must be returned to the buyer if the wedding falls through.

The ruling marks a departure from a decades-old state rule requiring courts to assess who was responsible for a breakup.

A man who purchased a ring for an extravagant $70,000 will be getting it back from his ex-fiancée after breaking off the engagement when he grew wary of infidelity in the relationship, per

Massachusetts' top court on Friday ruled that a would-be bride must return a $70,000 engagement ring from Tiffany & Co to her former fiancé in a decision that ended 65 years of courts in the New England state trying to sort through who is to blame when a relationship falls apart.

A woman must return a $70,000 engagement ring to her former fiance after a ruling Friday from the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court.

Who gets to keep an engagement ring if a wedding is called off? That’s what the highest court in Massachusetts was asked to decide with a $70,000 ring at the center of the dispute.

"We now join the modern trend adopted by the majority of jurisdictions that have considered the issue and retire the concept of fault in this context; where, as here, the planned wedding does not ensue and the engagement is ended,

The Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court has overturned a 65-year-old rule that required judges to identify and give engagement rings to the wronged party in a break-up. “More than six decades ago, we recognized that an antenuptial ring generally is understood to be a conditional gift and determined that the donor may recover the ring

The ruling puts a definitive end to a six-decade-old state rule that required judges to try to identify who was to blame for the end of the relationship.