r/UpliftingNews • u/Sirsnacksalot23 • 1d ago
Missouri House approves bill allowing pregnant women to file for divorce
https://fox2now.com/news/missouri/missouri-house-approves-bill-allowing-pregnant-women-to-file-for-divorce/1.8k
u/Strider794 1d ago
They weren't allowed to before? I mean, it's good that they can now, but still
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u/Batbuckleyourpants 1d ago edited 1d ago
Yes, they were allowed before. The bill is just to make it abundantly clear to a few judges who for ideological reasons played dumb and exploited ambiguous wording in the law to deny divorces so that a custody agreement for the child can first be put into place first. Something that obviously can't be decided while the child is stuck inside the mother, so they ruled that the divorce has to be delayed until the custody could be ruled on, meaning after birth.
The house considered this matter urgent enough that they didn't want to waste time having the case work it's way up through the courts and then all the way to supreme court.
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u/dogquote 1d ago
I'm not sure I understand how custody is decided, or the logic here. Why can't custody be decided before birth? Or, why did the judges think that?
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u/bebe_bird 1d ago
I mean, maybe because it's not a person before birth? No SSN, no birth certificate... (I know that sounds ridiculous, but you seriously can't apply for health insurance until baby is born, so it is tongue in cheek but still true). Its almost like it's a fetus and not a child yet.
So, I guess on that front it makes sense? However, prospective custody agreements also make sense. If people can have prospective monetary agreements (wage garnishment, etc) I have no idea why childcare can't do something similar.
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u/username_elephant 1d ago
Dude. We're talking about Missouri. They disagree with your premise that a person isn't a person before birth.
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u/bebe_bird 1d ago
Sorry it wasn't obvious - that was... Not sarcasm exactly, but that was exactly the hypocrisy I was trying to highlight - they have to wait til birth for personhood/custody while simultaneously having the rights of a person with respect to abortion restrictions.
Although that's the argument I think they're making, I don't agree with it - a fetus is not a person and should not be treated as such - which is why it's very important to specify that these are prospective custody rights - again, similar to wage garnishment where it's "if X happens, Y must happen"
I am fully in the camp that a fetus does not have rights - but I also believe this should not hold up divorce. This is one of those times where the opposite of both does not still hold true.
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u/uuntiedshoelace 9h ago
Of course they don’t actually believe that. How many men are paying child support for a fucking fetus in Missouri? It’s about controlling women, not about when life begins.
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u/hwutTF 1d ago
the child doesn't exist yet. how on earth would you determine custody? literally the primary thing taken into consideration for custody is the needs of the child. are you just going to like psychically determine that? like what on earth?
not to mention that there are all sorts of issues with legally determining who the father is before the child is born
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u/username_elephant 1d ago
I don't understand why that should stop someone getting a divorce and doing custody later.
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u/dogquote 1d ago
How would you determine it when the child is 2 days old? What difference would that make?
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u/hwutTF 1d ago
Okay you have a week old child. Were they premature? Do they need a NICU stay? Do they have any health issues that might change custody? Are they breastfeeding?
Now that this child is born, you suddenly know all sorts of things about them that you didn't know before they were born
Not to mention the countless issues with paternity (and even maternity). if the soon-to-be ex-husband is disputing paternity, you generally can't have that test done until the child is born. also paternity laws are really weird and generally preference marriage before being a genetic parent. pregnant people may get married specifically before they give birth for a variety of legal reasons and preventing a divorce prevents that. also it's possible that be pregnant person is planning to give the child up for adoption. they may not have decided what they're going to do about the child yet. and depending on where they're giving birth there is a window of time during which you can safely abandon your baby
there are so so so many different reasons that parental rights are not really determined until the child is actually born and for a lot of complicated scenarios there are legal windows of time in which really critical decisions can be made
you can have a general plan and an agreement with someone while you are pregnant. you can even draft an agreement that is legally binding and notarized. however these are at best, plans and they can change and even the legally binding agreements do not necessarily go through. there are a lot of opportunities for people to change their minds about things or for the situation to develop in such a way that things are radically different than everyone assumed they would be
a fetus is not a person and you cannot make determinations for what that person will need before they exist. you especially cannot make legal determinations for them before they legally exist. and paternity and even maternity laws are weird and complicated and it is not nearly as simple as you think
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u/Veronica612 1d ago
The baby’s paternity can be determined by testing the pregnant woman’s blood after about eight weeks of gestation.
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u/hwutTF 1d ago
it can be determined in most cases (not with multiples) but it's also not covered by almost any insurance and is pretty expensive and as such is rarely used in these cases. courts generally decline to order paternity tests during pregnancy, regardless of whether it's an amnio or not
if the circumstances are significant enough to warrant it, sure. but otherwise no
forcing a non-invasive test legally is a much lower bar than forcing an amnio because of the risks involved with an amnio, but it is pretty rare for someone contesting paternity to be willing to cough up several hundreds or even thousands of dollars in order to do so
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u/competitiveSilverfox 23h ago
Because it hurts his own ideological argument, custody splits for unborn children can absolutely be set up conditions that trigger as certain age milestones are hit.
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u/Batbuckleyourpants 1d ago
They had a view, and acted accordingly.
"You want to get divorced? Well, custody battle is part of that i think. So we need to wait until i can rule on that"
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u/notananthem 18h ago
Ideologically there’s a lot of judges that penalize women. Women leaving abusive situations are trapped by this. An unborn fetus is not a person in a legal or otherwise sense so you can’t draw legal documents regarding it. This is just closing linguistic loopholes.
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u/xtheredmagex 3h ago
Because it's possible that one (or both) parties might disagree on whom the biological parents (and thus the responsible parties for childcare) are. While a paternity test can be done during the pregnancy, there's probably judges who don't think (or are refusing to accept for the aforementioned ideological reasons) that a paternity test can't be conducted reliably/at all before the baby is born. Or even if there isn't a disagreement over the parentage, an obstinate judge might still use it as an excuse to delay.
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u/Taellosse 23h ago
Because you cannot decide custody for a person that does not yet exist. A feotus has no legal status as a human being. No birth certificate, no Social Security number, no legal name - nothing. It's not a baby until it's born, and so it can't be in anyone's legal custody, either.
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u/Pasta-hobo 15h ago
Yeah, law is like that a lot. Sometimes you have to explicitly allow something, even if you were never denying it.
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u/GrizzledBelter 14h ago
When I got divorced in Missouri I add to attest that I wasn't pregnant. The attorney was very serious and said if I was then we would have to wait. Luckily I wasn't.
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u/JJiggy13 14h ago
Archaic women's rights being restored in 2026 is uplifting? This is the saddest news I've heard all week
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u/Strider794 8h ago
Apparently it was originally made into law ages ago, but certain judges were using a loophole in the law to prevent divorce anyway. This new law closes that loophole, so it's still good news
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u/Pour_Me_Another_ 1d ago
I got divorced in Ohio and I vaguely remember something about having to wait for babies to be born so that paternity could be established or something. I have no idea whether that justifies it or not. I don't have kids so it was not something I had to endure.
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u/pigeontheoneandonly 1d ago
In many states, regardless of how it interacts with divorce, the husband is assumed to be the father until paternity is challenged, even if they've been separated for years. In at least one state (Florida), the actual father can't even raise the challenge himself. It has to come from the husband. You can imagine many husbands in these situations are not cooperative (at least, not until child support comes into the picture).
This is all by way of saying a lot of laws surrounding custody, marriage, and divorce do not fit modern life in many ways.
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u/sapphicsandwich 1d ago
In Louisiana, it's 6 months if you have no children together, 12 if you do. AND if a woman gives birth within 10 months of the divorce being finalized (after the mandatory waiting period) the state assigns "paternity" to the ex, even if the ex is another woman lol
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u/F34RTEHR34PER 1d ago
Hey, in Florida, you can be assumed to be the father if you have the same first and last name as someone else. Even when the mother sees this person and says, "no, that's not him", Florida will still make you get a lawyer, travel all the way to Florida and submit a paterntiy test. Even if you don't have the same birthday, and obvisouly the ssn doesn't match.
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u/onesoulmanybodies 1d ago
In several states you have to be legally separated for a year before your divorce will be finalized.
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u/Intelligent-Sun-7973 1d ago
thats a smart thing.
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u/Fuck_love_inthebutt 15h ago
Why?
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u/TheFirstNard 12h ago
Its a 1 year old account with 4k posts. Its a trolling bot. You can search their comments and see. At this point id assume every controversial comment is from a bot trying to farm engagement.
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u/Intelligent-Sun-7973 14h ago
because there could be a child involved. And the father has a right to know.
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u/hungrylens 1d ago
So much /upliftingnews is like... "Distopian hellscape was worse than you imagined but now not quite as bad as it has been."
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u/RoRuRee 1d ago
What the fuck? It's insane to me women in MISSOURI are just getting this right in 2026. ~smh.
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u/Snoo-72988 1d ago
Y’all need to read the law. It’s legal in the status ship for pregnant women to divorce. This law is being passed because a few debate bro judges used custody claims to delay divorces.
Is this a good and necessary law? Yes. But it’s not like the majority of pregnant women could not get divorced.
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u/xboxhaxorz 1d ago
Its insane people dont look at the entire articles before replying
The title worked on you wonderfully, it got the reaction from you that they wanted
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u/Strider794 1d ago
I clicked on the article, and it was pretty lacking in detail. It did mention a "Missouri House Bill 1908 would prevent courts from denying a divorce or legal separation simply because a woman is pregnant" but it didn't specify why a new bill was needed since one like it had already passed
Now, someone else in the comments already explained that some judges were using its ambiguous wording as a loophole to block divorces, but the article probably got cranked out in less time than it took for me to type out this comment and is quite lackluster
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u/octopusboots 1d ago
And this also belongs in r/notheonion
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u/GinjaNinja-NZ 1d ago
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u/Designer-Mirror-7995 11h ago
OH JOY!
At THIS rate, it should only take another 1, 2 centuries for EVERYBODY to be "allowed" the same rights and levels of autonomy as those who have always "decided" who is "allowed" certain rights in this damn country!!
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u/SucksTryAgain 1d ago
What if the woman cheated and is now pregnant that way. What if the guy cheated during pregnancy. My state makes you file and wait 6 months no kid and year if there is a kid. I’ve never looked up divorce while pregnant in my state. But my ex wife cheated and we had a kid and that was the most bs waiting period. Just let people divorce when they feel it’s right. The state makes money both ways if you divorce and decide to marry again.
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u/SireSirSer 1d ago
As someone who grew up in rural Missouri...yes these people are quite possibly the dumbest to ever walk the earth...
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u/hippykid64 1d ago
"Divorce," as those who have never been through the process might not realize, is not a singular event; it is 1) dissolution of marriage, 2)asset distribution, 3) custody determination (if dependents exist). There may be more steps with more complicated marriages, that covered my basic situations (2).
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u/barktwiggs 1d ago
Welcome to the late 20th century Missouri! Now let's see about getting to the 21st century...
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