Estate of Dimond

KONENKAMP, Justice.

[¶ 1.] Although never decided in South Dakota, many jurisdictions hold that, as a general rule, an unexplained transfer of money or property from a parent to a child creates a rebuttable presumption that the transfer was intended as a gift. In this case, nine months after a mother gave her son $25,000, he died. Declaring that the money was a loan, she sought reimbursement from her son’s estate as an unsecured creditor. In a hearing to resolve the mother’s claim, the circuit court applied the presumption of a gift and ruled that it could be rebutted only by clear and…