“Don’t get mad. Get everything.”
Those immortal words were spoken by the noble Ivana Trump in one of the great films of cinematic history: The First Wives Club.
And now, a woman in Georgia in the US has taken them literally – except she was never actually a first wife. She was never actually a wife at all.
Christopher Ned Kelley and Melissa Cooper were engaged until 2011, when Kelley suddenly had a change of heart (i.e cheated on her lots of times). At that point, Cooper could have just spent some quality time eating chocolate and licking her wounds. Instead, she sued him for breaking their engagement.
She sued him for breaking their engagement.
Here’s how it went down:
Man meets woman in 2000. Sparks fly. They move in together.
Man buys woman $10,000 ring and proposes in 2004.
Woman stops working to look after the child they have together, as well as the child she has from a previous relationship.
Man cheats on woman. She finds out. Stays.
Man cheats on woman again in 2011. She finds out. Gets mad. Man says he wants her to move out, take the kids, and that the engagement is off.
Woman says “lol no” and takes him to court. She sues him for ‘breach of promise to marry’. Wins $50,000.
Fifity. Thousand. Dollars.
He insists that they were never engaged in the first place and that the ring was just a gift. She insists that he’s a douche-canoe, and that she became a stay-at-home mum with the understanding that they would be married one day and he would be the sole bread-winner.
Christopher Ned Kelley tried to appeal the decision by saying that, if he has to pay Melissa Cooper for their time together, that essentially makes her a prostitute and that’s against the law. But the judge was all *eyeroll* “nice try.” The ruling stands.
Kelley must pay Cooper $50,000 for reneging on his promise to marry her.
Do you think that’s fair?
And oh all right. Here’s Ivana:
Top Comments
I think people look to much at gender. It doesn't matter that this is a female. If there has been an agreement, and due to that agreement not being upheld there has been a lack of earnings AND importantly therefore a very much diminished social security there should be a rectification of monies lost. It most definitely should be the same if HE was the stay at home dad and therefore lost his income and social security/superannuation for that period. It is about what is fair. Not about female power not about males being the victims of positive discrimination.
I think if you are living in a de-facto relationship (which is what this was) and you have diminished you're capacity to earn a living (which she has by agreeing to stay home to look after their child) then you should receive a financial settlement if the relationship were to fall apart.
For the father of the child in this situation to be able to walk away from the defacto relationship leaving the mother and his partner in a financially vulnerable position is unfair. I would think the same thing if the male in this scenario had been the one to stay home, or this was a defacto relationship between two men or two women.
Completely agree but that is different to receiving money for breaking a "promise" i.e. the engagement