In the funhouse-mirror era of social-media shares, soft-lit engagement photos, and wedding registries that live forever on the Internet, the broken engagement is an especially painful and humiliating experience. Even if it's expected, it still hurts; even if no one knows, or if those who know are kind and do not ask, you still dread the prospect of having to explain yourself. One of the few ways it can get worse, really, is if both parties become embroiled in a dispute so nasty that they are forced to litigate the details of their breakup in federal court. Such is the harrowing tale of one Ryan Strasser, an attorney in Virginia, and Sarah Jones Dickens, a recent recipient of an art history Ph.D.

According to Strasser's complaint, he bought Dickens a four-carat engagement ring about 18 months ago. It's valued at more than $100,000, and despite the dissolution of their plans to wed, she isn't giving it back.

About a month after they began dating, says Strasser, she moved into his D.C. condo for three weeks, when repairs necessitated by a car accident prevented her from returning home to North Carolina. (This is the sort of detail that makes for great wedding-toast fodder if the relationship goes well, but is insane if it does not.) When his one-bedroom condo proved too tight for them and their three dogs, they moved in July 2016 to a five-bedroom house in an upscale neighborhood, where he assumed sole responsibility for paying the $4,800-per-month rent and all their living expenses.

Also: "Within months" of agreeing to date exclusively, he says—which happened when she moved in!—she gave him a one-year proposal deadline. (Proposal deadlines never go well.) From the complaint, which Law.com has posted in its cinematic entirety:

Dickens reportedly had very specific requirements about diamond-rating criteria, and the ring they eventually selected together, which included fourteen diamonds total, was priced at $119,000—although Strasser was able to secure a slight discount. To help defray the cost, he took out a personal loan, on which he began making monthly payments of $912.71 in February 2017. He will continue to make those same payments through New Year's Day. Of 2020.

Later that month, he proposed—a moment he now describes in unnervingly sterile legalese, for reasons that will soon become obvious.