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S.D. Codified Laws § 25-7-6.1

Obligation of parents to support child--Liability of absent parent--"Continued absence from the home"

Applied in 36 court decisions — leading case Sazama v. State Ex Rel. Muilenberg (2007)

Most recently applied in Goff v. Goff (October 2024)

Source: SL 1989, ch 220, § 1; SL 1992, ch 182, § 1.

How often courts cite this section

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citing decisions per year

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.

Obligation of parents to support child--Liability of absent parent--"Continued absence from the home".

The parents of a child are jointly and severally obligated for the necessary maintenance, education, and support of the child in accordance with their respective means. Until established by a court order, the minimum child support obligation of a parent who fails to furnish maintenance, education, and support for his child, following a continued absence from the home, is the obligor's share of the amount shown in the support guidelines, commencing on the first day of the absence. For the purposes of this section, "continued absence from the home," means that the parent or child is physically absent from the home for a period of at least thirty consecutive days, and that the nature of the absence constitutes family dissociation because of a substantial severance of marital and family ties and responsibilities, resulting in the child losing or having a substantial reduction of physical care, communication, guidance, and support from the parent.

Official source: South Dakota Legislature. Reproduced from public-domain South Dakota statutes; confirm against the official source for the current text. Not legal advice.