Collecting debt in South Dakota: licensing, bonds and statutes of limitations.

“but this section shall not alter the effect of any payment of principal or interest.”

“No acknowledgment or promise is sufficient evidence of a new or continuing contract, whereby to take the case out of the operation of this chapter, unless the same be contained in some writing signed by the party to be charged thereby”

No provision in ch. 15-2 applies another state's limitations period to a claim arising elsewhere. § 15-2-8(1) gives 10 years for actions on judgments of federal or other-state courts and § 15-2-20 tolls while a defendant is absent from the state, but neither borrows a foreign period. Pass A asked whether the repealed §§ 15-2-9 to 15-2-12 had been a borrowing statute; the repealed text is not on sdlegislature.gov and was not verified, which does not change the current answer.

No South Dakota statute requiring a time-barred-debt disclosure in collection communications was located. Only federal Reg. F (12 CFR 1006.26(b)) applies.

The rule is common law preserved by the final clause of § 15-2-29. Slagle (S.D. 1944), construing the identical predecessor SDC 33.0213, explains that the doctrine originated in the holding 'that a new express promise by the debtor to pay his debt, whether then barred by the statute or not, fixes a new date from which to compute the statutory period', and that 'a partial payment of a debt may, under certain circumstances, constitute such an acknowledgment of a larger debt as will raise an implication of a new promise to pay the balance and to set the statute running anew'. Nilsson (S.D. 1945): 'a part payment to be effectual to interrupt the statute must have been voluntary and must have been made and accepted under circumstances consistent with an intent to pay the balance'; a payment applied by the creditor on its own authority does not count. The payments actually litigated in Slagle and Nilsson were made before the bar fell, and the Supreme Court has not squarely decided a modern consumer case on a post-bar payment: in Arnoldy v. Mahoney, 2010 S.D. 89, the circuit court found 7-8 year old debts 'revived' by $50 payments, but the Supreme Court reversed the summary judgment on other grounds and said 'We do not decide' the revival question; in Mealy v. Prins, 2019 S.D. 57, ¶ 27, the partial-payment argument was not reached. Mealy ¶ 20 confirms the written-acknowledgment route: 'SDCL 15-2-29 permits revival of a time-barred contract if a writing acknowledges the debt and is signed by the party to be charged'.