Continue reading “Through USD Tax Clinic, Law Students Offer Free Tax Representation” →

People who shield their wealth through financial trusts in South Dakota aren’t tax evaders, according to a Sioux Falls lawyer.

Terry Prendergast told the South Dakota Trust Association conference on Friday trusts are “nothing more” than a way to defer paying taxes until some future date. The federal IRS has complex regulations on how trust income must be reported each year.

Continue reading “Lawyer says South Dakota trusts defer taxes but don’t avoid them” →

South Dakota, one of a dozen states that has strict limits on who can qualify for Medicaid, could vote in November to expand health care coverage to thousands more people. A new state poll finds that supporters currently outweigh the opposition, but a large percentage have not made up their minds.

Roughly half – 54 percent – of registered voters in South Dakota support Medicaid expansion less than a month before the public decides the midterm referendum, according to final results from the SDSU Poll.

Continue reading “Poll: About half of South Dakota voters want Medicaid expansion, but many remain undecided” →

South Dakota Attorney General Mark Vargo earlier this month prepared to hire a law enforcement officer to coordinate investigations into the disappearance and murder of Indigenous people.

Continue reading “South Dakota AG plans to hire missing Indigenous coordinator” →

The Justice Department has announced the results of its efforts over the past year to protect older adults from fraud and exploitation. During the past year, the Department and its law enforcement partners tackled matters that ranged from mass-marketing scams that impacted thousands of victims to bad actors scamming their neighbors. Substantial efforts were also made over the last year to return money to fraud victims. This week, the Department also announced it is expanding its Transnational Elder Fraud Strike Force to amplify efforts to combat scams originating overseas.

Continue reading “South Dakota Takes Part in the United States Department of Justice’s Wide-Ranging Efforts to Protect Older Adults” →

Jeff White knows what can happen when 911 dispatchers receive a call about someone who feels despondent or agitated.

He experienced it repeatedly: The 911 operators dispatched police, who often took him to a hospital or jail. “They don’t know how to handle people like me,” said White, who struggles with depression and schizophrenia. “They just don’t. They’re just guessing.”

Continue reading “Mental health crisis teams aren’t just for cities anymore” →

South Dakota’s minimum wage is moving north of $10 per hour.

The South Dakota Department of Labor and Regulation said Wednesday, Sept. 28 that the state’s minimum wage will officially increase to $10.80 per hour starting on Jan. 1, 2023. That increase is 85 cents from where it stands today at $9.95 per hour, an increase of 8.5%.

Continue reading “South Dakota minimum wage to move to $10.80 per hour for largest increase since 2015” →

A woman who brought a raccoon into a North Dakota bar during happy hour faces criminal charges, and the animal was killed by state health authorities.

Erin Christensen, 38, brought the animal she called Rocky to the Maddock Bar & Club around 4:30 p.m. on Sept. 6. According to the account that bartender Cindy Smith gave the Bismarck Tribune, there were about 10 people in the bar. Rocky remained in Christensen’s arms during the five-minute visit, she said, and nobody was bitten.

Continue reading “Woman brings raccoon to North Dakota bar; she’s arrested, he’s put to death” →

The Justice Department is failing to adequately and efficiently collect data about deaths in state prisons and local jails, with at least 990 incidents going uncounted by the federal government in fiscal year 2021 alone, according to a newly released bipartisan Senate report.

The report’s findings were the focus of a hearing Tuesday of the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, which took the federal Bureau of Prisons and then-Director Michael Carvajal to task this summer over accusations of unsanitary and unsafe conditions at a penitentiary in Atlanta and other allegations of misconduct across the federal prison system.

Continue reading “Hundreds of Prison and Jail Deaths Go Uncounted by the Federal Government, Report Finds” →

Getting to grips with the distinctions that separate civil cases from criminal equivalents, even if you aren’t currently facing charges or have not been victimized in the recent past.

This is arguably an area of the law that everyone needs to understand, and thankfully it is a specific topic once you know the basics, so let’s dive in and settle this once and for all.

Continue reading “The Differences Between Civil and Criminal Cases” →