Will a man who broke off an engagement with his fiancée over an alleged affair get back the $70,000 ring he bought for the woman he planned to marry?

That’s a question in front of the Massachusetts State Supreme Judicial Court amid a six-year battle filled with twists and turns over whether the mister will recover the ring or the madam will keep it forever.

All had been faring well in the love shared between Bruce Johnson and Caroline Settino, with the couple getting engaged at the glitzy Wequassett Resort & Golf Club in Harwich, on Cape Cod, in late August 2017.

The engagement came just over a week after Johnson purchased a $70,000 engagement ring at Tiffany’s jewelry store in Boston, a price astronomically higher than the $5,500 cost average in the country, according to The Knot.

Johnson and Settino had planned the wedding for September 2018, and the soon-to-be plaintiff purchased two wedding bands from Tiffany’s with the wedding date inscribed inside for over $3,700, according to court documents.

But instead of exchanging vows that year, Johnson served Settino with a lawsuit after he had reason to believe she was cheating on him.

On Friday, Johnson’s years-long fight to get the ring and wedding bands back took center stage in Massachusetts State Supreme Judicial Court in Boston.

Johnson’s attorney, Stephanie Taverna Siden, requested the high court overturn a trial court’s decision that Settino keep the ring and award the expensive bling back to her client.

Taverna Siden said she also wants the SJC to change the state law on how engagement rings are treated after a breakup, for Massachusetts to adopt a “no-fault, conditional gift rule.”

“It is the most equitable and efficient approach and prevents courts from wading into the details of private relationships,” Taverna Siden wrote in an April court filing.

“The Court should continue to treat engagement rings as conditional gifts,” she added, “because the status of conditional gifts preserves the special significance of the engagement ring and also prevents unjust enrichment.”

Johnson and Settino’s engagement grew sour when the man noticed his fiancée started to become verbally abusive as she called him a “moron” and “treated him like a child,” according to court documents.

Tension escalated in November 2017 when Johnson went through Settino’s phone and saw a text she sent to another man, reading “[m]y Bruce is going to be in Connecticut for three days. I need some playtime.”

That’s when Johnson grew wary of Settino’s infidelity, believing she was having “sexual intercourse” with the other man, court documents state.

A Brockton Superior Court judge ruled in 2021 that those fears were unwarranted, and Settino and the other man were “friends and not romantically involved.” The court ruled Settino could keep the ring and ordered Johnson to pay more than $42,000 in planned dental work he had promised he’d fund during the engagement.

“It is generally held that an engagement ring is in the nature of a pledge, given on the implied condition that the marriage shall take place,” documents state, citing the trial court’s ruling. “If the contract to marry is terminated without fault on the part of the donor, he may recover the ring.”

Years later, the case is still making its way through the courts with Johnson deciding to appeal the trial court’s decision, and a state Appeals Court ruling in his favor last year.

“Although the plaintiff may have largely been motivated by a mistaken belief,  it could not be said that he was unjustified or did not have adequate cause to break the engagement under the circumstances presented,” the Appeals Court found, per a blurb on the state engagement ring law.

“Accordingly, he was entitled to the return of the engagement ring and wedding band,” the blurb states.

Settino, who said her life “imploded” after Johnson broke off the engagement, appealed the latest ruling to the Supreme Judicial Court.

“I was a teacher, I had 60 people from my school coming to the wedding,” Settino said in Appeals Court last year. “We were putting them all up for two days at the resort, we had all sorts of things … so when he called off the wedding and said I was cheating, I was devastated.”