Extreme cruelty is the infliction of grievous bodily injury or grievous mental suffering upon the other, by one party to the marriage.
S.D. Codified Laws § 25-4-4
Extreme cruelty defined
Applied in 19 court decisions — leading case Rykhus v. Rykhus (1982)
Most recently applied in Goeden v. Goeden (August 2024)
Source: SDC 1939, § 14.0708.
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.