Marriage is a personal relation, between a man and a woman, arising out of a civil contract to which the consent of parties capable of making it is necessary. Consent alone does not constitute a marriage; it must be followed by a solemnization.
S.D. Codified Laws § 25-1-1
Marriage defined--Consent and solemnization required
Applied in 10 court decisions — leading case Billion v. Billion (1996)
Most recently applied in Rosenbrahn v. Daugaard (January 2015)
Source: SDC 1939, § 14.0101; SL 1959, ch 50, § 1; SL 1996, ch 161.
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.