Every person with sufficient ability to provide for his or her spouse's support, or who is able to earn the means of the spouse's support, who intentionally abandons and leaves his or her spouse in a destitute condition, or who refuses or neglects to provide such spouse with necessary food, clothing, shelter, or medical attendance, unless, by the spouse's misconduct, he or she is justified in abandoning the spouse or failing to so provide is guilty of a Class 6 felony.
S.D. Codified Laws § 25-7-4
Failure to support spouse as felony
Applied in 4 court decisions — leading case Jasper v. Smith (1995)
Most recently applied in Estate of Gaspar v. Vogt, Brown & Merry (October 2003)
Source: SDC 1939, § 13.3205 as enacted by SL 1963, ch 56, § 1; SL 1984, ch 12, § 49.
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.