Today on Better Call Sex, if you like it, then you better put a ring on it. But man, once that ring's on it, who the hell gets it back when the engagement ends? This is a question the Osbourne family is asking right now. We also talk about whether Hermione loves herself a billionaire just because, or if it's 'cuz he's a billionaire, or if it's this like cool name 'cuz it is a pretty cool name. All of this and more. Let's get after it.
Love is dead, Jim. Kelly Osbourne and her...
I'm out of a job. That's true. I can go home then. Great.
Kelly Osbourne and her fiancé have split up after seven months of their engagement.
What chance do any of us have? Look at him. He looks like that Tiger King guy.
He looks like, yeah, he looks like Joe Dirt mixed with Joe Exotic.
He's got a lot going on there. He proposed at the final Black Sabbath concert seven months ago.
Remember that? And now they have split up.
Kelly is not looking great.
A lot of speculation about, you know, maybe some eating disorder issues. She said that she's not eating because she's mourning her father, and now her relationship is in disarray. So a lot to cover there, but also a question that we have not really tackled here: when you split up as an engaged couple, what happens to the ring?
Oh my god, that is a matter of controversy. How much time do you have? Yeah, engagement rings. A whole thing. Engagement rings. I have had to go after a lot of engagement rings. I've had to file suits. Finance bros in New York City spend a lot of money on their engagement rings. They really do. Especially when they're marrying like models and yoga teachers and things like that.
What's the rule? A third of your salary? A quarter of your salary?
Three months' salary. Three months' salary. Which, if you're working for BlackRock or Goldman, that's a pretty big ring right there. That had to have been a girl who made that up, right?
You can see that thing from space. Yeah. Some girl was like, 'What do we like? They're never going to go for that. Like, just tell him, just tell him, have sex with him. Say six months. Say six months. Say six months and be like, "Six." You start with six, then you bring it down to three. Come on. What a night.' It's just a negotiation. Five months' salary. Everybody knows that.
See, here's the thing. That's the thing about men. Like, that would have worked on me in my 20s. If I was like, 'Jim, it's eight months' salary. Don't you? Everyone knows that.' I'd be like, 'Well, obviously I know that. Everyone knows that.' Then you're like, 'That's great, only three months' salary. This is great. Oh, thank God.' Which, you know, when I was in my 20s, three months' salary would have been at least $400 or $500.
I was going to say you're getting a cubic zirconia. Yeah, you're getting a CZ without the setting.
Yeah, engagement rings are an interesting area of practice. I've had to get a bunch of them back. The nicest one being $1.2 million.
Wow. See, that is—I think I wouldn't go after it, but if I dropped 1.2, I'm going after it.
At one point, I had like four engagement rings in my safe.
Yeah, we have like a built-in safe, like for passports, children's passports, things we have to hold in escrow. We have jewelry sometimes that has to be held in escrow. We once had quite a bit of jewelry. And this is a really secure, bolted safe in a highly secured building. But I have to say, I had a bunch of engagement rings. I once had them like on my fingers like this, you know, and I took like a photo. Yeah, I should have posted it somewhere, but I didn't. It's still on my phone somewhere. But yeah, look, an engagement ring is a very interesting thing. An engagement ring by definition is a gift given in contemplation of marriage. Meaning, you are giving it to a person before you get married. Therefore, it is separate property. It is pre-marital property. It's something that you did not acquire during the marriage. You acquired it prior to the marriage by definition. Now, it's also a gift given in contemplation of marriage. So if the marriage doesn't happen, you have to give the ring back. It was not a gift given to you just like a Christmas present. And by the way, every time somebody says, 'No, it was given as a birthday present. Oh no, he gave it to me near Halloween and it was a Halloween present. Arbor Day. It just happened to coincidentally match up when he was proposing to me.' But the law has recognized that this is a gift given in contemplation of marriage. And if the contemplated marriage does not happen and the person says, 'I want the ring back,' you got to give it back. But if the contemplated marriage happens, even if it ends in divorce a month later, a week later, six months later, six years later, that gift is a pre-marital gift you gave to this person in contemplation of marriage. The contemplated marriage took place. It is their separate property and they get to keep it. End of story. So, and that's automatic. You don't have to like sign anything. That's just—you don't have to sign anything. Now, you can even get more nuanced in this, 'cuz what if it's grandma's stone?
Right. Well, that was my next question.
If it's a family heirloom, the court system has solved this one too. There's case law out there that says if there's an heirloom stone that's given to someone and the contemplated marriage takes place—so now we've got a gift given in contemplation of marriage, you get married, so now it's owned as the separate property of the person who received it—but you say, 'Hey, wait, this is grandma's ring, and now we're getting divorced.' The courts say, 'Okay, give him back the ring, that specific ring, grandma's stone, but you have to give her the value of that ring.'
Oh, fuck. Well, that's probably not usually that much if it's...
Well, it's 'cuz now it begs the question, and we've litigated the fuck out of this on both sides. Well, I have not seen Jim lit up like this in a while. This is the law geek in me. Like, I have argued both sides of this issue and I get both sides of it, and it's so much fun to argue it because it's like—it's just such a single-issue thing and it's not at all that nuanced. So, I kind of love that kind of argument.
It's kind of petty, but it kind of makes sense.
Oh my god, it's the most fun kind of trial. Single-issue trials are the best. So, I've advocated for both sides of this, but here's where it gets interesting and complicated. Now, I have an heirloom. Okay, I get it back. I think that's fair. That makes sense. It's grandma's stone. It's irreplaceable. You get it back. So, now you have grandma's stone back, but you have to give her the equivalent of it. Okay. Now, is it the replacement value? Is it the salable value? Which is it? Because as we all know, the jewelry industry and the wine industry, the markup is everything. Like, and you, by the way, you can get jewelry appraisals done, but it's usually an appraisal of the replacement value, meaning fair market value. Problem is, you can't get a jewelry store owner to tell you, 'Here's what I'd pay for it, and here's what I'd sell it for,' because they'd be acknowledging their markup. And the jewelry industry is notorious for making their money on that middle between what they paid for something and what they sell it for. And again, that's part of their business model, but nobody wants to show the world how the sausage was made. So, you get in this really weird space of, okay, if I've now got to compensate this person for the stone, is it a replacement stone or is it the salable value of the stone? 'Cuz one of those—the sale value—is going to be much, much lower than what it would be to replace it. And does she need a replacement? It's not like this is an engagement ring that she now needs another one of because she wants to still wear an engagement ring. So it's usually, in my experience, courts have leaned towards the sale value, meaning if she sold this—because again, if a marriage ends and there's an engagement—by the way, I have had people come in and say, 'I want to pay your retainer with my engagement ring.' So like, 'I don't have money, but I have this $400,000 engagement ring. Can I give you this as a retainer?' And as a lawyer, I say no. If you want to sell that ring, if you have a right to sell it, and you want to then get the money and retain me with that, you can do that.
Well, because my thought—I always thought that trying to sell an engagement ring, they know that—they know what's happened and they know that you are over a barrel and so... Yeah. So, it's not worth $400,000. It's probably worth $400, right?
No. By the way, there are a number of—just as a side note that's related to this topic—a number of very creative things you can have done with your wedding ring when you get divorced. There are services that will make it into jewelry, like cuff links or anything else. My favorite: they'll make it into a bullet.
I was just going to say that.
They'll make it into a fireable bullet. So, you can go out and you can pop off a cap at a range or at something else with your now-melted-down wedding ring, or you can wear it as a piece of jewelry. I had a client who had it made into a functional bullet, and they drill a hole in it and he has it as a necklace.
Yeah. But you can—there are some creative uses for that, you know. I mean, I just put it in—mine just sat in a safe and I was like—and then she asked for it back and I gave... I don't remember what I did with mine. I just—I mean, there's just no keeping it. Yeah. It was just like... Yeah. I don't remember what I did with mine. Now that I have it to do—like if I had to do it over again, I would have done cuff links or something, like a little skull or something like that.
Yeah. Yeah. Like something creative, you know? Lemons out of lemonade.
Emma Watson is back in the news. After, you know, five years ago—well, five years ago she said that she was self-partnered and she was on this crusade of like, you don't need a man to be happy.
Could you imagine if a man said that? If a guy was like, 'I'm self-partnered'—it's unbelievable. And any term to... I feel like Emma Watson has taken pretension to a whole new level.
Well, she's—her episode on Jay Shetty made me go like—Jay and I like Jay, but I was like, oh dude, this is—don't platform this person. She is only going to get more pretentious now. She is now dating a Mexican tech CEO, Gonzalo Eviña Balieres.
That's a cool name though.
