An action may be maintained by any person or persons having or claiming to have an estate or interest in or lien or encumbrance upon any real property, whether in or out of possession thereof and whether such property is vacant or occupied, against any person or persons claiming an estate or interest in or lien or encumbrance upon the same or any part thereof for the purpose of determining such adverse interest, estate, lien, or encumbrance, and against all persons who appear from the records in the office of the register of deeds, the county treasurer, clerk of courts, or other public records in the county where such land lies to have or ever to have had any estate or interest in or lien or encumbrance upon such real property or any part thereof and against personal representatives, heirs at law, devisees, legatees, and creditors of any such person or persons who may be deceased, whether such personal representatives, heirs at law, devisees, legatees, and creditors be known or unknown, and generally against all persons unknown who may have or claim to have any estate or interest in or lien or encumbrance upon such real property or any part thereof for the purpose of quieting the title to such real property and of determining such estate, interest, lien, or encumbrance, and in such action any number of persons may be joined as plaintiffs, whether holding as tenants in common, joint tenants, partners, or in severalty, where the relief demanded in the complaint is common to all of such plaintiffs.
S.D. Codified Laws § 21-41-1
Action authorized--Purposes of action--Persons authorized to maintain action--Parties defendant
Applied in 11 court decisions — leading case Fanning v. Iversen (1995)
Most recently applied in Bryant v. Bryant (March 2026)
Source: CCivP 1877, § 635; CL 1887, § 5449; RCCivP 1903, § 675; SL 1903, ch 194, § 1; SL 1905, ch 81; SL 1917, ch 199; RC 1919, § 2846; SDC 1939, § 37.1501; SL 1945, ch 162.
How often courts cite this section
Court decisions citing this, by year. The dip in the last several years is a data-coverage gap, not a real trend — our corpus holds fewer opinions from the most recent years, so recent citations are undercounted.
Official source: South Dakota Legislature. Reproduced from public-domain South Dakota statutes; confirm against the official source for the current text. Not legal advice.