The owner of a life estate may use the land in the same manner as the owner of a fee simple, except that he must do no act to the injury of the inheritance.
S.D. Codified Laws § 43-8-1
Rights of life tenant--Use of land--Exception
Applied in 3 court decisions — leading case In Re the Administration of the Florence Y. Wallbaum Revocable Living Trust Agreement (2012)
Most recently applied in In Re the Administration of the Florence Y. Wallbaum Revocable Living Trust Agreement (March 2012)
Source: CivC 1877, § 256; CL 1887, § 2772; RCivC 1903, § 279; RC 1919, § 349; SDC 1939, § 51.0706.
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.