When an engagement doesn’t follow its due course, who gets custody of the ring? The question is central in a lawsuit filed by a man who says his onetime fiancée “rushed” him into marriage, all the while planning to drop him and keep the rock. Rena Hope Friedman and Roger Adler were introduced by their mothers at a Hamptons Labor Day Party. Friedman fell hard for the clinical ophthalmologist, or so he thought, and just six weeks later he spent $58,000 on a ring to mark their engagement. Twelve days after that the whirlwind romance spun to a stop, but Friedman held on to her diamond. Adler thinks he should it get it back; not only that, he accuses his former love of pulling the same scam on other would-be husbands.
According to the Post, Friedman convinced the jeweler who’d sold the ring to put her name on the appraisal form—evidence that she might have been planning to cash it in later. In court papers Adler states that Friedman was "previously engaged to an other male . . . the engagement ended under similar circumstances . . . [she] failed to return the engagement ring in the previous matter." Lawyers for Adler’s case say “an engagement ring belongs to the person who bought it until the marriage occurs.”
And there’s more to suggest Friedman had dollar signs in her eyes: she allegedly milked her betrothed for expensive gifts like a new car and told him "No one travels coach to Australia." Friendman’s biggest con of all? Shaving more than a decade off her age.
