The idea that “pregnant women in Missouri can’t get divorced” and therefore can’t leave abusive husbands has gone viral.  

This is a dangerous misunderstanding of law that is likely to make a pregnant Missourian think there is no use in filing for divorce when she may need to start the process and get a separation agreement, an order of protection, or child support while the divorce is underway.

One news story after another has portrayed Missouri law as uniquely awful. A number have featured the stories of women who sought to file for divorce but were turned away by lawyers who told them to “come back when they’re not pregnant.”

If a lawyer tells you something to that effect, you have reached a bad lawyer and must find a better one.

What Missouri’s statute requires is that a petition for divorce state whether a party is pregnant.  This is bad for reasons I will explain below. However, it does not mean women are “not allowed to file for divorce” and it is not unique to Missouri. 

For example, the blue and purple states of Illinois, Delaware, Colorado, and Michigan have statutes that say the same. The littlest bit of research reveals that the oft-repeated and weirdly specific claim that only three other states (Arkansas, Texas and Arizona) have similar laws is wrong. I found at least ten states with similar statutes, and without doing a comprehensive survey, I can’t tell you if that number is closer to fifty.

It is true that judges in Missouri and elsewhere don’t typically finalize divorces when a party is pregnant. The reason is that, ideally, a divorcing couple with kids will have child support and custody agreements in place when they finalize the divorce. That isn’t done before the court has jurisdiction over the baby once it has been born and things are known like paternity and whether the baby has special needs impacting how much child support is necessary.  

Another reason to wait to finalize is that a divorce decree will disqualify a pregnant person from being on her former partner’s health insurance plan. 

But should a party nevertheless wish to finalize a divorce during pregnancy, there isn’t actually anything in Missouri law barring a judge from doing so.

Divorces, especially with kids, can indeed take a long time, but this is not a Missouri thing. Some states even have mandatory waiting periods. In California, for example, where the petition form asks if there is a “child who is not born,” no divorce can be finalized until six months after filing, and lawyers warn it will likely take twice that long.  

It is not necessarily bad that a judge will wait to finalize a divorce until a baby is born. And it is definitely not something that should stop a pregnant woman from starting the divorce process, especially if she needs other legal protections. In many jurisdictions, just the filing of the petition triggers automatic orders that are particularly important in situations of financial abuse, prohibiting things like disposing of assets or dropping a spouse from insurance policies. 

It is a problem that Missouri and so many other states require a person to disclose her pregnancy status in order to file for divorce (or, alternatively, to perjure herself). The intent was to make sure that fathers financially support future children of the marriage, but mandatory disclosure is an invasion of privacy. Worse, it is a potential threat to one’s safety—pregnancy increases a woman’s risk of being a victim of homicide significantly.

And mandatory disclosure is particularly dangerous in Missouri given our abortion ban. An abuser can scare a partner or ex with threats of law enforcement involvement should she seek to terminate the pregnancy or if she miscarries, whether those threats are legally realistic or not.

So Missouri legislators should amend our divorce statute to eliminate required disclosure of pregnancy status. As should the blue states that have the same requirement. 

A petition for divorce should give one the option to seek support for an anticipated child. If someone really does prefer to come back to court after the divorce is final to seek child support, she should be able to do that. She should not be required to tell her husband and the court that she is pregnant at filing.

But I am not going to hold my breath for our dysfunctional Missouri legislature to fix the statute quickly. I want women to understand now that they are absolutely not “legally prevented” from leaving their husbands while pregnant, and they may be best served by starting what could be a long and painful process as early as possible. 

State Rep. Ashley Aune introduced a bill in the past two legislative sessions that would make it explicit in Missouri law that “pregnancy status shall not prevent the court from entering a judgment of dissolution of marriage or legal separation.” I asked her if she shares my understanding that nothing in current Missouri law bars a judge from finalizing a divorce when a party is pregnant, which she does. The problem that she is trying to address is what is happening in practice. 

To the extent the practice is a problem, it can only get worse if news stories and tweets overstate the issue and lead pregnant women, lawyers and judges to think there is a hard and fast rule when there is not.

Missouri is backwards on women’s rights in so many ways, but this isn’t one of them.  

That is not to say that any of this is easy or straightforward.  It is difficult to find a lawyer or represent yourself, and exponentially harder if you are low income, trying to take care of kids, or in an abusive marriage.  But waiting until a child is born doesn’t necessarily make anything simpler and has the potential to make things much worse.  

Misinformation can be extremely disempowering. Let’s stop telling women there is nothing to be done while pregnant and instead support them in the difficult steps of leaving — both physically and legally.