Women in Missouri can’t get a divorce while pregnant. Many fear what this means post-Roe

Alissa Keaton was in grade school in the early 1980s when her mother gathered her siblings at their St. Louis area home and fled from Keaton’s abusive stepfather.

Once settled near Rolla, Keaton’s mother filed for divorce. A few weeks later, she found out she was pregnant. The divorce was put on hold and she eventually returned to live with him. The abuse continued.

In Missouri, divorce cases cannot be finalized if a woman is pregnant, since a custody agreement must first be in place, multiple attorneys told The Star. That custody agreement cannot be completed until the child is born.

The state law, while old, gained renewed attention after the Supreme Court on June 24 overturned Roe v. Wade, repealing the constitutional right to abortion. The decision immediately made abortion illegal in Missouri.

While many call the restriction outdated, none of those interviewed, including advocates, survivors and attorneys, know of any efforts to change the law.

For Keaton, the law meant that her mother felt she had no option but to return to Keaton’s stepfather after she learned she was pregnant. In that time, the abuse and manipulation seemed to escalate, she said. While her mother was in labor at the hospital, Keaton’s stepfather sold all their furniture and their refrigerator, leaving their mother to store breast milk in a Styrofoam beer cooler.

Many shelters say that on average, it takes about seven attempts for victims to leave an abuser.

Keaton, now a counselor in the Kansas City area who works in part with domestic violence survivors, said two of the most dangerous times for survivors are when they leave their abuser and when they’re pregnant. A recent study found homicide is a leading cause of death during pregnancy and postpartum in the U.S.

After her sister was born, Keaton remembers her stepfather, who she said had compromised her mother’s birth control in the past, telling her mother, “If you leave again, I’ll just get you pregnant again.”

Four months after giving birth, Keaton’s mother saved enough to again file for divorce. This time she was successful.

But had her mother been able to leave when she initially filed for divorce, it would have saved their family from enduring an additional year of abuse, which included child sexual abuse, Keaton said.

The state left her mother no agency over her own situation, Keaton said.

An ‘archaic’ law

Jess Piper, a teacher running as a Democrat for the Missouri House of Representatives in District 1, in northwest Missouri, took to Twitter after news leaked in May of the forthcoming Supreme Court decision.

“Fact: you can’t get a divorce finalized if pregnant in Missouri. Forced pregnancies can prolong abusive situations,” she wrote.

Many people replied with disbelief. Others said they knew from personal experience.

She did too. At 34, Piper divorced her husband. It was not an abusive relationship. Her attorney at the time warned her not to get pregnant.

“The moment we become pregnant we lose rights,” she said, appalled.

There are eight questions asked of everyone filing for divorce in Missouri. One of them is whether “the wife is pregnant.”

If the answer is yes, the divorce proceedings can continue if the attorney chooses, but cannot be finalized until the woman is no longer pregnant.

That is because, according to Missouri statute, the court must first establish paternity of a child before a divorce can be finalized, said Shannon Gordon, a family law attorney practicing in the Kansas City metro. Due to a statutory presumption that a baby born during a marriage is the child of the husband, a DNA test is often completed after the child is born in order to establish paternity in court. Then divorce proceedings can continue.

The reason for all this, ultimately, is child support considerations, Gordon said.

“It is the public policy of the state of Missouri that whenever possible, a child has two parents to contribute to the child’s financial support,” she said.

Gordon said at any given time, about 10% of her caseload includes situations where a pregnancy is involved. She has about 10 clients a year who have to navigate the “archaic” law that Gordon said doesn’t cater to the modern family.

It can cause a host of challenges, she said. For example, if an individual wants to remarry following a separation, and the other person is pregnant with someone else’s child, that marriage must be put on hold until after the child is born.

But in most cases, Gordon said, the implications are largely financial, including acquisition of marital property, marital liabilities and inheritances.

Sometimes, there is not a father to list.

Crissy Del Percio, a staff attorney at the Legal Aid of Western Missouri, once had a client who was married, but didn’t know who the father of her child was.

After exhausting their resources trying to find the dad, they eventually put “John Doe” as the father in the divorce and paternity action listing.

“This is just an exercise in futility,” Del Percio said. “This child still doesn’t have a dad and this was a waste of everyone’s time. And we had to do it.“

Keaton, the daughter of a domestic violence survivor, recently filed for her own divorce after discovering her ex-husband had been cheating on her. She said filing gave her a sense of agency and of being able to move on with her life. She was grateful not to be pregnant during it.

“It’s not like we have to reinvent the wheel,” said Keaton, noting that many other states handle matters of paternity, custody and divorce separately. “The messaging is that the father’s rights are more than the mother’s rights.”

Arizona, Arkansas and Texas have laws similar to Missouri’s, according to the American Pregnancy Association.

Reproductive coercion

There are no exceptions to the divorce law for survivors of domestic violence, said Gordon, the family law attorney. Even though some victims can physically escape their abuser while the divorce is on hold, other things, like finances, can be wielded “to a really devastating degree.”

“We oftentimes see an abused spouse not have the financial means to establish a home,” she said. “Being legally entitled to things like money – and actually having the money – are two very different things, particularly when a case is ongoing.”

She said the process is antiquated, written into law “so that we don’t bastardize children.”

In modern times, it’s often used as a tactic by abusers to get their victim to stay with them longer, she said.

Del Percio, who exclusively works with survivors of domestic violence, frequently sees reproduction coercion at play.

That can look like abusers hiding birth control or poking holes in condoms, marital rape or spouses who lean on religion saying, “God wants you to be fruitful and reproduce and you’re my wife and that’s your place in this life,” Del Percio said.

While victims, once pregnant, can physically separate from their abuser, divorced or not, there are still numerous ways their abuser can control them, Del Percio said.

She has seen abusers intercept taxes and child tax credits, take out loans in their spouse’s name, forge their spouse’s signature, open accounts for utilities and even steal the victim’s vehicle, claiming it as “marital property.”

The overturning of Roe v. Wade

Lynn, who lives in the St. Louis area, said she became pregnant after her husband raped her. Many people in her circle recommended she get an abortion. She chose not to.

But what matters is she had a choice, said Lynn, who asked to go by her middle name. The Star does not generally share full names of victims of domestic violence without their permission.

Because she had a child with her abuser, Lynn said, she was never able to truly remove him from her life.

While previously in group therapy at Rose Brooks, a domestic violence emergency shelter in Kansas City, Lynn said many woman voiced the difficulties of distancing themselves from their abuser if they had children together. She remembers one woman who was denied the option of moving to Clay County by a judge because of her custody agreement.

“They’re now going to be stuck to this person … they’re going to be tied to them for life with the Roe decision now,” Lynn said, referencing the case also known as Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization.

Matthew Huffman, chief public affairs officer at the Missouri Coalition Against Domestic and Sexual Violence, said that because abortion is now illegal in Missouri, he fears more survivors will face more difficult decisions with fewer options.

“We are ultimately forcing survivors to make the decision between accessing safety and autonomy for themselves, or staying in an abusive and deadly situation that can get even worse for them,” he said.

As a result of the Supreme Court Dobbs decision is that we’re seeing exactly how interconnected all of these issues of intimate partner violence and family planning are.”

Local resources

If you or someone you know is the victim of domestic violence, the following resources are available:

Hope House is a nonprofit that operates six domestic violence shelters in the Kansas City area. You can reach it directly at 816-461-4673 or call the metro domestic violence hotline at 816-468-5463 to reach any of its shelters.

The Mattie Rhodes Center provides crisis counseling services primarily in Spanish to Kansas City families. Its services include domestic violence intervention and mental health counseling. You can contact the center at 816-241-3780.

MOCSA (Metropolitan Organization to Counter Sexual Assault) is Kansas City’s largest resource organization for survivors of sexual assault. You can contact the group’s crisis hotline at 816-531-0233 in Missouri or 913-642-0233 in Kansas.

Newhouse is a domestic violence shelter in Kansas City that also provides therapy services, court advocacy and transitional housing. You can call the shelter at 816-471-5800. Safehome is a domestic violence shelter and nonprofit located in Overland Park. You can call its 24-hour hotline at 913-262-2868.

Rose Brooks is a domestic violence shelter that also accommodates pets. You can call its 24-hour crisis hotline at 816-861-6100.

Synergy Services is a domestic violence and youth crisis resource center based in Parkville. Teens and young adults can call its youth crisis hotline at 816-741-8700 or 888-233-1639 to learn about its services, which include a shelter for runaway and homeless youth.

MOCADSV also has a statewide public directory for those searching for help outside the Kansas City metro.