Effective 28 Aug 2001

474.140. Inheritance and statutory rights barred on misconduct of spouse. — If any married person voluntarily leaves his or her spouse and goes away and continues with an adulterer or abandons his or her spouse without reasonable cause and continues to live separate and apart from his or her spouse for one whole year next preceding his or her death, or dwells with another in a state of adultery continuously, such spouse is forever barred from his or her inheritance rights, homestead allowance, exempt property or any statutory allowances from the estate of his or her spouse unless such spouse is voluntarily reconciled to him or her and resumes cohabitation with him or her.

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(RSMo 1939 § 337, A.L. 1955 p. 385 § 250, A.L. 2001 H.B. 537)

Prior revisions: 1929 § 337; 1919 § 333; 1909 § 365

(1963) Wife was barred from statutory rights and allowances in deceased husband's estate on the ground that she had abandoned him for more than one year, and husband's filing of cross petition in wife's divorce action which was not concluded before husband's death held not to constitute acquiescence in such abandonment. Heil v. Shriner's Hospital for Crippled Children (A.), 365 S.W.2d 736.

(1967) A claimant may qualify as a "widow" within the purview of this section only if she has been reduced to that condition by the ordinary and usual vicissitudes of life and not by a felonious act committed by her which created that condition. In re Estate of Laspy (A.), 409 S.W.2d 725.