Whenever a person, or a husband and wife jointly, petition the circuit court for leave to adopt a minor child, the judge of the circuit court must fix a time for hearing not less than ten days from the filing of the petition. A petitioner may file the petition with the circuit court before the six-month period required by § 25-6-9 has passed. The circuit court may, in the case of a stepparent adopting a stepchild, and shall in all other cases, direct an agent of the Department of Social Services or another competent person to make a careful and thorough investigation of the matter and report the findings in writing to the court. The investigative report must include the history of any previous child support obligations of each prospective adoptive parent.
S.D. Codified Laws § 25-6-10
Petition--Time of hearing--Investigation ordered--Report
Applied in 5 court decisions — leading case Matter of Adoption of Baade (1990)
Most recently applied in Matter of the Adoption of A.A.B. & B.A.B. (March 2016)
Source: SDC 1939, § 14.0406; SL 1945, ch 47, § 1; SL 1947, ch 54; SL 1979, ch 167, § 1; SL 1990, ch 186; SL 2000, ch 117, § 1; SL 2024, ch 97, § 1.
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.