Fault shall not be taken into account with regard to the awarding of property or the awarding of child custody, except as it may be relevant to the acquisition of property during the marriage or to the fitness of either parent in awarding the custody of children.
S.D. Codified Laws § 25-4-45.1
Fault not considered in awarding property or child custody--Exceptions
Applied in 24 court decisions — leading case Hanks v. Hanks (1980)
Most recently applied in Zepeda v. Zepeda (August 2001)
Source: SL 1976, ch 165.
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.