Family Law

Yes, and the statute is on your side. Missouri’s separation agreement provision, RSMo § 452.325, exists “to promote the amicable settlement of disputes between the parties to a marriage attendant upon their separation or the dissolution of their marriage,” and it provides that the terms of a written separation agreement — excluding custody, support, and visitation of children — are “binding upon the court unless it finds… that the separation agreement is unconscionable.”

Read that again, because it is the whole point. On property and spousal maintenance, the two of you decide, and the judge’s role shrinks to a conscionability check. On the children, the court still reviews the parenting plan against the child’s best interests — but a plan two parents actually agreed to is approved far more often than not.

What we do is unglamorous and it is what makes settlement work: value the estate accurately, calculate support correctly, figure out the realistic range a judge would land in, and then negotiate from that instead of from a position. A case settled on bad information is not a settled case; it is a modification motion with a delay built in.

And if the other side will not deal in good faith — hiding income, refusing to exchange documents, using the children as leverage — we try the case. Being genuinely ready to do that is, in practice, one of the main reasons cases settle.

Two things are decided separately. Legal custody is decision-making authority over health, education, and welfare. Physical custody is where the child actually resides. Missouri defines joint physical custody as “significant, but not necessarily equal, periods of time during which a child resides with or is under the care and supervision of each of the parents” — RSMo § 452.375.

The significant change: effective August 28, 2023, Missouri law now carries a rebuttable presumption that an award of equal or approximately equal parenting time to each parent is in the child’s best interests. That is a starting point, not a mandate — it is rebutted with evidence under the statutory best-interest factors, which include each parent’s willingness to allow the child frequent and meaningful contact with the other parent, the child’s adjustment to home, school and community, the mental and physical health of everyone involved including any history of abuse, and any intention to relocate.

The legislature also declared it the public policy of the state that “frequent, continuing and meaningful contact with both parents… is in the best interest of the child,” except where the court specifically finds otherwise.

Practically, the presumption changed the negotiating baseline more than it changed trials. A parent asking for something well away from equal time now needs a reason a court will credit — and a parent who assumed the old default still applies is negotiating against a rule that no longer exists.

It is not optional. Missouri requires that every court order establishing or modifying custody or visitation include a specific written parenting plan setting forth the terms of the arrangement. If the parents do not submit one the court will impose one, and a judge’s generic plan is rarely as good as the one two parents who know their own schedules could have written.

A plan that prevents future litigation covers the boring specifics: the regular schedule with exchange times and locations; holiday and school-break rotation set out year by year so nobody argues about whose turn it is; summer; how decisions about school, medical care, and activities get made and what happens if the parents deadlock; transportation and who drives; communication between households and between each parent and the child; travel and passports; the tax dependency exemption; and how the plan changes as a young child gets older.

Nearly every enforcement motion we see traces back to a plan that said “reasonable and liberal visitation as the parties agree.” That phrase works exactly as long as the parties agree, which is precisely when you do not need it.

Through Form 14, and the number it produces is presumptively correct. Missouri Supreme Court Rule 88.01 provides that “there is a rebuttable presumption that the amount of child support calculated pursuant to Civil Procedure Form No. 14 is the correct amount of child support to be awarded.” A court can depart from it, but only with a written or on-the-record finding that the correctly calculated amount is unjust or inappropriate.

The disputes are almost never about the formula. They are about the inputs: what counts as gross income for a self-employed parent or one with variable bonus or commission income; imputed income where a parent is voluntarily underemployed; the credit for overnights with the paying parent; work-related childcare; health insurance premiums for the children; and support obligations for other children.

Because the worksheet is presumptively correct, a Form 14 run with the wrong numbers is worse than no worksheet at all — it anchors the entire negotiation. This is the single most common thing we correct in cases that come to us partway through.

You do not have to prove fault to get divorced. Missouri asks whether the marriage is irretrievably broken, not who caused it, and you cannot force your spouse to stay married by contesting the reason.

Conduct is not entirely irrelevant, though. In dividing marital property the court is directed to consider, among other factors, “the conduct of the parties during the marriage” — RSMo § 452.330. Conduct is also one of the factors in setting maintenance. And where the conduct involves the children — abuse, or a pattern of undermining the other parent’s relationship — it goes directly to the custody analysis.

The honest counsel is that the return on litigating an affair is usually very poor. Financial misconduct is different: dissipating marital assets, hiding income, or moving money before filing is worth pursuing, because it is provable and it changes the division.

No. Missouri is an equitable distribution state, which means the court divides marital property “in such proportions as the court deems just” — often near equal, but not by rule. Under RSMo § 452.330 the court considers the economic circumstances of each spouse, each spouse’s contribution to acquiring the marital property including as a homemaker, the value of the non-marital property set apart to each, the conduct of the parties, and the custodial arrangements for the children.

The threshold question is classification. Property acquired during the marriage is generally marital; property acquired by gift, bequest, devise or descent, property acquired in exchange for premarital assets, and property excluded by written agreement are generally separate. Separate property that has been commingled with marital funds, or that has grown in value through marital effort, is where most of the genuine fights happen — an inheritance deposited into a joint account, or a premarital business built up during the marriage.

Debt is divided too, and a divorce decree does not bind your lenders. If a joint credit card or mortgage is assigned to your spouse and they stop paying, the creditor still comes to you. Refinancing or closing joint accounts as part of the settlement is worth more than most people realize at the time.

This is where the largest number in the case usually sits, and where the most damage gets done by treating it as an afterthought. A closely held business interest acquired or grown during the marriage is generally part of the marital estate, and it has to be valued before it can be divided.

Several questions run together. What is the business actually worth — and by what standard, since a value for a buy-sell agreement, for an estate, and for a divorce are not the same number? How much of the value is the owner’s personal goodwill rather than a transferable asset? Does the operating agreement restrict transfers, so an interest cannot simply be split? Is the owner-spouse’s reported compensation realistic, given that it drives both support and value? And how do you divide it in practice — a buyout over time, an offsetting share of other assets, or a continued co-ownership almost nobody actually wants?

Missouri gives an LLC’s operating agreement wide berth. RSMo § 347.081 directs that the statute be construed to give maximum effect to the principle of freedom of contract, so what that document says about transfers, valuation, and buyouts frequently controls the outcome.

Most family firms send this out to a business attorney and a valuation expert. We do the business side in-house, which is a real reason to bring a case like this here.

Maintenance is not automatic and it is not the norm. Under RSMo § 452.335 a spouse must first clear a two-part threshold: they must lack sufficient property, including the marital property apportioned to them, to provide for their reasonable needs, and be unable to support themselves through appropriate employment — or be the custodian of a child whose condition makes it appropriate that they not be required to work outside the home.

Only if that threshold is met does the court reach amount and duration, weighing the financial resources of the party seeking it, the time needed to acquire education or training, the standard of living during the marriage, the duration of the marriage, the age and physical and emotional condition of the party seeking it, the ability of the paying spouse to meet their own needs while paying, the conduct of the parties, and the comparative earning capacity of each spouse.

Two structural points are worth knowing before you negotiate. Missouri has no maintenance formula, so the range of defensible outcomes is wide — which is exactly why this term settles well. And maintenance can be made modifiable or non-modifiable; that single choice often matters more over ten years than the monthly figure does.

The statutory floor is short. Under RSMo § 452.305, a court may enter a judgment of dissolution once one party has been a Missouri resident for ninety days immediately preceding the filing, and thirty days have elapsed since the petition was filed.

In practice, a genuinely uncontested case with a signed settlement agreement and no children can conclude not long after that thirty-day mark, subject to the court’s docket. A settled case with children, a house, and retirement accounts more commonly runs a few months, because the financial exchange and the drafting take real time. A contested case with a trial setting is measured in many months to well over a year depending on the county.

The variable you control is how quickly and completely you produce your financial information. The cases that stall are almost always waiting on documents, not on the court.

Yes, but the standard is deliberately demanding, because courts do not want orders relitigated every year.

For custody, RSMo § 452.410 requires the court to find “that a change has occurred in the circumstances of the child or his custodian and that the modification is necessary to serve the best interests of the child” — and the change must have arisen since the prior decree or have been unknown to the court at the time. Both halves matter: a real change that does not make modification necessary is not enough.

For support and maintenance, RSMo § 452.370 requires “changed circumstances so substantial and continuing as to make the terms unreasonable.” There is a useful shortcut on child support: if a correctly recalculated Form 14 under current circumstances would change the existing amount by twenty percent or more, that is a prima facie showing of changed circumstances.

Common qualifying changes: a substantial and lasting change in either parent’s income, a parent relocating, a child’s needs changing significantly, a schedule that has quietly shifted so far from the order that the order no longer describes reality, or one parent’s persistent refusal to follow it. What usually does not qualify: a new partner you dislike, a temporary dip in income, or disagreements about parenting style.

Document it first, then act, and do not self-help. Keep a contemporaneous record of missed exchanges, denied parenting time, and missed payments — dates, times, and what was said, in writing. A written record made as things happen is worth far more to a judge than a recollection assembled later.

The remedies include a motion for contempt, a motion for make-up parenting time, and enforcement of a money judgment for support arrears through wage withholding and other collection tools. In appropriate cases a persistent refusal to follow the order is itself the changed circumstance that supports a modification.

The mistake to avoid is retaliation. Withholding the children because support was not paid, or stopping support because parenting time was denied, is a violation in its own right — parenting time and support are separate obligations, and a parent who takes the law into their own hands generally arrives in front of the judge in a worse position than the parent who did not.

Signing the birth certificate or an affidavit acknowledging paternity establishes that you are the legal parent. It does not give you custody, parenting time, or a support order — those require a court judgment. Many unmarried parents discover this only when the relationship ends and they learn they have no enforceable schedule.

A paternity action under Missouri’s Uniform Parentage Act establishes parentage and then sets custody, a parenting plan, and support in the same case, applying the same best-interest standard and the same equal-parenting-time presumption that applies in a divorce. Genetic testing is available where parentage is disputed.

On timing, RSMo § 210.828 allows a child with no presumed father to bring an action up to three years after turning eighteen, with other parties generally limited to eighteen years from the birth. Retroactive reimbursement of support furnished by another party is limited to the five years preceding the action — which is a meaningful reason not to wait.

Not without following the relocation statute, and this is one of the most consequential procedural traps in Missouri family law. Under RSMo § 452.377, notice of a proposed relocation of the child’s residence must be given in writing by certified mail, return receipt requested, at least sixty days in advance, absent exigent circumstances.

The notice has required contents: the intended new residence including the specific address if known, the home telephone number if known, the date of the intended move, a brief statement of the reasons for the relocation, a proposed revised schedule of custody or visitation, and a statement that the other party must file a motion within thirty days to seek an order preventing the move.

The other parent then has thirty days to object by motion with an affidavit setting out specific factual good-faith reasons, and the relocating parent has fourteen days to respond. Absent a timely objection, the residence may be relocated after the sixty days.

Relocating without proper notice is treated seriously and can itself support a change of custody. It applies to in-state moves too, not only crossing the state line. If either side of this is on your horizon, get advice before you sign a lease.

Often, yes — and it is usually to your advantage. Many Missouri circuits require the parties in a contested family case to attempt mediation before the court will give them a trial setting, and the legislature has expressly declared it the public policy of the state to encourage parents “to resolve disputes involving their children amicably through alternative dispute resolution.”

Mediation is not arbitration. A neutral mediator has no authority to decide anything; they help the two of you reach an agreement, and what is said in mediation is generally confidential and not used against you if it fails. You keep your attorney, and you keep the right to try the case.

Mediation works best when both sides arrive knowing their own numbers — a completed income and expense statement, a correct Form 14, actual account balances and valuations. Mediating on guesswork usually produces either no agreement or a bad one. Preparing you properly for that session is a substantial part of what we do.

Sometimes. Under RSMo § 452.423, the court must appoint a guardian ad litem in any proceeding in which child abuse or neglect is alleged. In other contested custody, visitation, or support proceedings the court may appoint one, on motion or on its own.

The GAL is a lawyer appointed to represent the child’s interests — not either parent’s. They can examine witnesses and offer testimony, and they are directed to interview people with contact with the child to ascertain the child’s wishes, feelings, attachments, and attitudes. In practice a GAL’s recommendation carries considerable weight.

The parties normally pay the GAL’s fee, which the court sets and may allocate between them, and it is a real cost. That is one more concrete reason settled cases cost less: an agreed parenting plan often removes the need for an appointment at all.

If either of you brings a business, a professional practice, significant separate assets, an expected inheritance, or children from a prior relationship, it usually is. Marital agreements are enforceable in Missouri, but courts scrutinize them, and the ones that fail almost always fail for the same reasons.

The agreement needs to be fair and reasonable, entered into freely and without coercion, and — the requirement that most often sinks these — based on full and fair disclosure of each party’s assets, debts, and income. An agreement signed a week before the wedding, with one party unrepresented and no financial disclosure attached, is the classic case a court declines to enforce.

There is also a hard boundary: child custody and child support cannot be bound by a marital agreement. A court may consider such terms alongside everything else, but it is not bound by them, and a document that purports to settle them is inviting a challenge to the rest of itself.

Done properly — both parties separately represented, complete schedules of assets attached, signed well before the wedding — these agreements hold, and they coordinate with an estate plan in ways that are difficult to achieve any other way.

Not automatically, and not completely — which catches people. The documents that pass the most money often pass outside the will entirely. Retirement accounts, life insurance, payable-on-death accounts, and transfer-on-death registrations go to whoever is named on the beneficiary form, and an ex-spouse who is still named there generally still collects.

Powers of attorney and health care directives deserve immediate attention too. If your spouse is named as your financial agent and your health care decision-maker, that remains true while the case is pending unless you change it.

The sequencing matters, because Missouri courts commonly enter orders restraining both parties from changing beneficiary designations or disposing of assets while a dissolution is pending. Some changes can be made right away, some have to wait for the judgment, and doing the wrong one at the wrong time is a contempt problem.

Estate planning is a core practice here, so this gets handled alongside the divorce rather than remembered a year later. See Estate Planning.

It depends far more on how the case proceeds than on the hourly rate. An uncontested or fully settled dissolution can frequently be handled on a flat fee, because the scope is knowable in advance — you know the number before we begin. Contested matters are hourly against a retainer, with a written estimate and the assumptions it rests on, updated when circumstances change.

The costs people underestimate are the ones outside the attorney’s fee: the filing fee, service of process, a guardian ad litem where one is appointed, a business valuation or appraisal, a QDRO prepared for each retirement plan, and mediation. We identify which of these your case will actually need at the consultation rather than as they arrive.

The honest arithmetic is that the difference in total cost between a case that settles and the same case tried is usually far larger than any difference in hourly rate between firms. That is the main reason we push settlement, and it is also why we do the preparation work early — the preparation is what makes settlement possible.

Whatever the structure, it is confirmed in a written engagement agreement before substantive work begins, and Missouri Rule 4-1.5 requires the fee to be reasonable and its basis communicated to you.

Whatever you have; incomplete is fine, and the gaps are often as informative as the documents. Most useful: any existing court order or parenting plan, recent pay stubs and last year’s tax return for both of you if you have them, a rough list of assets and debts with approximate balances, retirement and investment statements, information on any business interest, and the mortgage and deed if there is a house.

If children are involved, a short written description of the schedule that actually happens now — not the one on paper — is more valuable than almost anything else, because it is frequently the strongest evidence of what the arrangement should be going forward.

If you have been served with a petition or a motion, bring it and say when you were served. Response deadlines are short and they do not wait for a convenient appointment.

You will leave the consultation knowing the realistic range of outcomes, whether the matter can likely be settled, roughly what it would cost either way, and what to do in the next two weeks.