A Missouri lawmaker has introduced legislation to clarify that state judges can grant divorces even if one spouse is pregnant.
The idea that they can’t do that has already angered people who see it as an outdated policy that unfairly controls women, potentially sending them into abusive marriages.
But divorce attorneys say the practice — which extends beyond Missouri — is not intended to punish pregnant women and has some important practical benefits.
Here’s a look at the problem.
Missouri divorce law does not specifically prohibit divorce finalizations for pregnant women, but “whether the woman is pregnant” is one of eight pieces of information — along with things like where the parties live and when they separated — that is necessary when someone files for divorce.
Lawyers and advocates say judges in Missouri and some other states won’t finalize divorces if a woman in the couple is pregnant. But that doesn’t stop someone from starting the process during pregnancy.
Nevada Smith, a St. Charles, Missouri, attorney who handles divorces, said it makes sense that judges would not finalize divorces during a pregnancy because a child would impact the custody and child support terms of a divorce. And divorces usually take months, even in the rare cases with no contested issues.
“You really need to know whether you have two children or three,” he said.
Or a child born with special needs can also change the equation.
The situation is similar in other states, says Kris Balekian Hayes, a Dallas-based attorney who handles divorces. She said Texas judges also do not handle divorces while either spouse is pregnant. Exactly which other states have similar practices is difficult to determine because it is not written into the divorce laws.
Family courts are already clogged with cases in many places, Hayes said, so revisiting them after the birth of a child wouldn’t help.
“People have complained that it’s so bizarre that we can force someone to stay married to the abuser,” said Hayes, who said that in her 25 years of divorce law, she could think of only four cases she handled that involved pregnancy. “It is not intended as a punishment for her, but to take into account the needs of the child.”
She said the first step in dealing with an abusive relationship is seeking a protective order, not divorce.
Missouri Rep. Ashley Aune, a Democrat up for re-election this year, said she wants to use the law to make it clear that divorces can be finalized even during pregnancy.
She said the issue was brought to her attention by a group serving victims of domestic violence, which she said needed to build an additional facility to house women with multiple children, in part because they are not allowed to divorce while pregnant.
“If you can keep someone pregnant all the time, it has devastating consequences,” Aune said in an interview.
Aune said the policy also involves men, including cases where they are trapped in a marriage with a woman who is pregnant by another man.
“Life is different in 2024 and I would like to see our policies move with the times,” she said.
At a committee hearing in February, everyone who signed up to testify on the measure supported it.
In written testimony, Julie Donelon, president of the Metropolitan Organization to Counter Sexual Assault, told lawmakers that the restriction on divorce during pregnancy “creates an unnecessary obstacle and delays a woman’s ability to leave an abusive relationship.” ”
But the path for the legislation is not clear.
Aune said she has reviewed the exact language of the measure.
And she said that even after that is refined, she is not confident it will move forward, in part because she is a Democrat in a Legislature dominated by the Republican Party — even though Republicans are among the sponsors of the bill.
Rep. Bill Hardwick, chairman of the House Emerging Issues Committee, to which Aune’s bill was assigned, said he is open to it but is unsure whether it will come up for a vote.
“That’s kind of a new frontier for some judges and some lawyers,” Hardwick said. “I think we have to think about that in a responsible way.”
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Associated Press reporters Jacques Billeaud in Phoenix; Andrew DeMillo in Little Rock, Arkansas; and David Lieb of Jefferson City, Missouri, contributed to this article.
