You can get married in Missouri as young as 16 — for now. It used to be even younger

Missouri senators Holly Thompson Rehder and Lauren Arthur have teamed up to sponsor legislation that would effectively ban all child marriages in Missouri.

The bill would prohibit marriage licenses from being issued to anyone under 18 under any circumstance.

The current Missouri state law allows 16- and 17-year-olds to get married in Missouri as long as they have parental consent. The law also bans marriage between a minor and anyone 21 or older.

“Currently, no marriage license shall be issued in Missouri for individuals under 16 years of age or issued when one party to the marriage is under 18 years of age and the other party over 21 years of age,” the bill says. “Additionally, no marriage license shall be issued if any party to the marriage is under 18 years of age without parental consent.”

But the law used to be even more lenient than it is today.

Here’s the history of child marriage laws in Missouri.

What was Missouri’s child marriage law before?

Before 2018, anyone 15 or younger could get married in Missouri. No place in the United States was easier, The Star found in 2018 through an analysis of child marriage statutes across the country.

At the time, children ages 14 or younger could also marry in Missouri, because the state was one of 25 states with no minimum age requirement. A judge needed to approve the marriage if a child was 14 or younger, but if a child was 15, they only needed one signature from a parent.

In other states where marriages at 15 or younger were legal, statutes generally required both parents’ signatures, a judge’s approval or proof of pregnancy.

The Star’s analysis showed that Missouri was a destination wedding spot for 15-year-old child brides. More than 1,000 child brides married in Missouri between 1999 and 2015, The Star found, with people coming in from states like Arkansas, Colorado, Arkansas, Florida and Oregon.

Up to one-third of the girls were marrying men over 21, meaning any premarital sex was statutory rape.

Jackson, Dunklin, Jasper and St. Louis counties were the hotspots for child marriages, according to The Star’s analysis.

When did the law change?

After The Star’s investigation, Missouri lawmakers passed a law in 2018, setting the state’s minimum marriage age at 16, with the approval of one parent or guardian.

The state’s statutory rape law does prohibit those 21 or older from sexual intercourse with anyone under 17.

Before the 2018 law, 88% of minors who were married in Missouri were age 16 or 17, said Fraidy Reiss, the founder and executive director of Unchained At Last, a nonprofit seeking to end child marriage nationwide, told The Star’s Kacen Bayless this week.

Between 2019 and 2021, 231 minors were married in Missouri, and most of them were girls married to adult men, said Reiss.

The Star’s Eric Adler and Kacen Bayless contributed to this report.