Spaulding v. Spaulding’s Empirical Analysis
1979
Citation profile
24 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 24 later decisions — most recently December 1994
24 state decisions
Later decisions citing this case, by decade. The current decade is in progress, and our corpus holds fewer opinions from the most recent years, so the latest bars are undercounted — not a real decline.
Relationships
Relies on Masek v. Masek · Blow v. Lottman · Taber v. Taber · Pochop v. Pochop · Huckfeldt v. Huckfeldt
Most-quoted passages
The sentences later courts lift from this opinion, ranked by how many decisions quote each — the parts of the opinion doing the work. These counts are smaller than the citation total above because most of the 24 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“When the mother, by irresponsible conduct, indicates that her care and custody would be detrimental to the welfare of the child, custody may be awarded to the father. Hines v. Hines, 78 S.D. 464 , 104 N.W.2d 375 (1960); Blow v. Lottman, 75 S.D. 127 , 59 N.W.2d 825 (1953); Sweeney v. Joneson, 75 S.D. 213 , 63 N.W.2d 249 (1954).”
3 later decisions quote this exact passagee.g. Hanhart v. Hanhart · Hanks v. Hanks“[f]ather and mother must be compared as to who could provide the better educational, moral, physical, emotional, temporal, and mental benefits.”
2 later decisions quote this exact passagee.g. Kolb v. Kolb · Hanks v. Hanks“Upon review this court must give due regard to the opportunity of the trial court to judge the credibility of the witnesses and its findings will not be set aside unless they are clearly erroneous.... The trial court has broad discretion in awarding custody of minor children and we will not interfere with that discretion unless the record presents a clear case of abuse.”
1 later decision quote this exact passagee.g. Buseman v. Buseman
How this case has been treated — in progress
Whether each later court followed, distinguished, criticized, or overruled this decision. The treatment classification (task #35) runs highest-cited cases first and lights up here as it reaches this one.