That is, brides could keep rings – even expensive ones – without getting married.

This new convention, Brinig has written, could have served as a form of compensation if the bride had lost her virginity after getting engaged. Should the marriage not happen, she’d at least have something of value to hold onto.

In the second half of the 20th century, U.S. divorce laws changed, and courts stopped determining who was to blame when married couples broke up. In what came to be known as no-fault divorce, neither spouse had to prove the other had cheated or been cruel to them.

And, as law professor Rebecca Tushnet documents, many courts have applied a similar “no-fault” framework to broken engagements. That means it doesn’t matter who broke it off, or why.

In addressing that rule in 1997, three judges on a Pennsylvania superior court drew on the story of Adam and Eve, meandered into Roman times and then announced “the gift of the ring to [the bride] at the time of their betrothal was subject to an implied condition requiring its return if the marriage did not take place.”

And that was in a case in which a man who had proposed to his girlfriend called off the engagement twice.

Courts in Iowa, Michigan, Minnesota, Mississippi and other states have issued similar rulings.

But the Supreme Court of Montana held in 2002 that an ex-fiancée could keep her engagement ring after a breakup. Noting that women “often still assume the bulk of pre-wedding costs,” the court expressed concerns that treating engagement rings as gifts conditional upon marriage could perpetuate gender bias.

And a Texas court ruled a year later that someone who gave an engagement ring to his fiancée and then later called off the wedding was not entitled to its return.

In California, a state law enacted in 1939 provides that the ring must be returned if the marriage is broken off by mutual consent or the person who received an engagement ring initiates the breakup.

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