South Dakota route screening
Sources reviewed August 9, 2026. Latest primary-source re-fetch October 3, 2026.
South Dakota allows collection of a decedent's personal property by affidavit under SDCL § 29A-3-1201 when "the value of the entire estate, wherever located, less liens and encumbrances, does not exceed $100,000", thirty days have elapsed since death, no application or petition for appointment of a personal representative is pending or has been granted, and the decedent has not incurred any indebtedness to the Department of Social Services for medical assistance for nursing-home or other medical institutional care. A separate route, SDCL § 29A-3-1203, lets a successor perfect title to the decedent's real property by an affidavit filed with the register of deeds sixty days after death, where the decedent's interest in all South Dakota real property does not exceed $50,000.
Threshold evidence and currency
Currency: No later session-law supersession is recorded in the reviewed source set for this threshold. The edition/currentness label below is the basis for the published figure.
Controlling citation: S.D. Codified Laws § 29A-3-1201 — Source: SL 1994, ch 232 , § 3-1201; SL 1995, ch 167 , § 136; SL 1997, ch 172 , § 1; SL 2002, ch 100 , § 26; SL 2003, ch 157 , § 1.
Verbatim threshold text from that source:
(1) The value of the entire estate, wherever located, less liens and encumbrances, does not exceed $100,000; (2) Thirty days have elapsed since the death of the decedent
| Procedure | Collection of personal property by affidavit (SDCL § 29A-3-1201) |
|---|---|
| What counts | Personal property only; real property is outside this route |
| Value basis | Value less enforceable liens and encumbrances |
| Waiting period | 30 days after death |
What a small-estate screen can and cannot decide, and which assets never enter it, is explained once in small-estate affidavit or probate and what counts as a probate asset.
The South Dakota small-estate provisions sit in Title 29A. They could not be read on the date below: sdlegislature.gov serves a JavaScript application rather than statutory text, and the API paths tried returned the same shell as the browser route. The Unified Judicial System information page for probate returned HTTP 404, and its form search is likewise script-driven.
Affidavit ceilings are among the most frequently amended figures in any probate code. Montana’s was last changed in 2023; Delaware’s section carries amendments through 85 Del. Laws; Illinois’ has a further amendment pending. A South Dakota figure taken from an undated secondary summary could easily be several revisions old.
Publishing it anyway would make this page look more complete while making it less trustworthy, so the ceiling is left unstated and the reason recorded.
The clerk of courts in the county where the decedent was domiciled can confirm the current threshold and whether the estate’s assets fall inside it.
The access record, so it can be re-tested rather than taken on trust: the sdlegislature.gov statute and chapter routes each returned HTTP 200 carrying the identical 5,982-byte application shell, and two documented API paths under the same host returned that same shell rather than JSON. On the Unified Judicial System site, the forms index returned HTTP 404, the probate information page returned HTTP 404, and the form search responded but renders its results from script. Every one of those is a live, healthy host declining to serve the text.
Two things follow that are worth stating plainly. First, a 200 response is not evidence that a document was retrieved — four of the six attempts above succeeded at the HTTP level and returned no law. Second, the shape of this blank is different from Hawaii’s: Hawaii refused the request outright with 403, while South Dakota answers every request and simply never sends the statute. Recorded as a bare absence, the two would look the same.
What can be said about South Dakota without the text is only structural, and it is the same point the compensation note makes: adoption of the Uniform Probate Code predicts the section numbering, not the dollar figure. Montana and North Dakota both carry the uniform small-estate architecture and still differ from one another on scope, on value basis and on the number itself. A South Dakota ceiling inferred from either neighbour would be a guess wearing a citation.
Authority that would settle this: S.D. Codified Laws tit. 29A (small estates). The access attempt described above was made on 2026-09-17. Nothing is quoted from it, because nothing could be read from it; a figure restated from a secondary summary would look like a sourced answer without being one.
Reviewed source note: (1) The value of the entire estate, wherever located, less liens and encumbrances, does not exceed $100,000; (2) Thirty days have elapsed since the death of the decedent
What this means: Section body served by the South Dakota Legislature's official statutes API (JSON), which returns the codified section text in its 'Html' field because sdlegislature.gov renders statute pages client-side.
South Dakota record: 5/5 verified, 16 matched checks, latest source re-fetch October 3, 2026. Source record · method · report a correction