Adoption 101: The Legal Fundamentals

Recovering Your Losses After A Broken Engagement

13 October 2016

Brayden Miles

Breaking up while engaged is easier than divorce, from a legal perspective, but it can be just as devastating from an emotional and financial standpoint. If your ex-fiancé has recently called off your wedding and left you saddled with the bills, you may be wondering about possible legal action to recover at least some of your losses. Although this area of law is inevitably murky and case-dependent, you may have grounds to explore a personal injury case against your ex-fiancé. Go over these four steps with a skilled personal injury attorney to determine if your unique case is strong enough to go to court. 

Checking How Your State Handles Engagements

At one point in time, an engagement was not something to be taken lightly, and men who cancelled their wedding were legally vulnerable to breach of trust laws. These laws are less common today, but many states still have them on the books, which may strengthen your claim. Talk to your attorney about the best charges to put together moving forward; even without breach of trust laws on your side, you can probably still sue for any financial losses or emotional distress you have incurred as a consequence of your ex-fiance. 

Settling Ownership of the Ring

If a man gives a woman an engagement ring and then one of them calls it off, who gets to keep the ring? Particularly in cases where the ring is very valuable, this is often the primary point of contention in these cases. To have the best chance of keeping your engagement ring, you should work to demonstrate how your ex-fiancé is responsible for breaking the engagement. Most courts will be more sensitive to the jilted lover than to the person who left. 

Demonstrating Other Financial Losses

Wedding planning takes months, if not years, to finish, and during this time you must make reservations, buy a dress, pay caterers, and devote hours of your time to logistics and family emergencies. The closer you are to the wedding, the more having your engagement broken can leave you on the hook for these charges. If your ex-fiancé left you to deal with these expenses on your own, you may be entitled to have all or some of the costs distributed between you for the sake of fairness. 

Proving Emotional Distress

Finally, you may be able to tack on an emotional distress claim to your suit. Most courts can sympathize with the trauma of being abandoned by a person you were planning to spend the rest of your life with, particularly if that person acted in bad faith. Your personal injury attorney can help examine the details of your case to determine the strongest charges available to you. By the time the case is over, you will hopefully have moved on with your life with a sense of closure and the satisfaction of knowing that you won't be stuck with years of debt due to the bad behavior of another person. 

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