The nonleptonic weak decay of Λ^+_c →K̅^0 η p is analyzed from the viewpoint of probing the N^*(1535) resonance, which has a big decay branching ratio to η N. Up to an arbitrary normalization, the invariant mass distribution of η p is calculated with both the chiral unitary approach and an effective Lagrangian model. Within the chiral unitary approach, the N^*(1535) resonance is dynamically generated from the final state interaction of mesons and baryons in the strangeness zero sector. For the

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... ffective Lagrangian model, we take a Breit-Wigner formula to describe the distribution of the N^*(1535) resonance. It is found that the behavior of the N^*(1535) resonance in the Λ^+_c →K̅^0 N^*(1535) →K̅^0 η p decay within the two approaches is different. The proposed Λ^+_c decay mechanism can provide valuable information on the properties of the N^*(1535) and can in principle be tested by facilities such as BEPC II and SuperKEKB.