Any personal representative or person nominated as personal representative who defends or prosecutes any proceeding in good faith, whether successful or not, is entitled to receive from the estate necessary expenses and disbursements including reasonable attorney's fees. The court may also award necessary expenses and disbursements, including reasonable attorney's fees, to any person who prosecuted or defended an action that resulted in a substantial benefit to the estate.
S.D. Codified Laws § 29A-3-720
Expenses in estate litigation
Applied in 18 court decisions — leading case Matter of Estate of O'Keefe (1998)
Most recently applied in Estate of Tank (November 2023)
Source: SL 1994, ch 232, § 3-720.
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.