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.

There’s a long-standing debate about what happens when an engagement is called off: Who should get to keep the ring? After 65 years of court debates in Massachusetts, a ruling has been made the fate of one very expensive engagement ring.

The Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court has ruled that engagement rings must be returned to the person who originally purchased them, even when a breakup occurs. This new ruling overrules a 70-year-old law that tied ownership to the person deemed at fault in the relationship's end.

The Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts has ruled that a woman must return her $70,000 Tiffany & Co. engagement ring after her fiancé canceled their wedding. This decision ends a decades-long legal debate in Massachusetts over who keeps the engagement ring when a relationship ends.

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.

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.