Do I Have to Wait Until the End of My Case to Get Custody of My Child?
No. Missouri law lets you ask for a temporary custody order while the case is still pending, and that order can be entered long before anyone sees a trial date.
The question behind the question is usually simpler than it sounds. Custody of my child during the case and custody of my child at the end of the case are two separate decisions, made at two different times, under two different statutes.
The mechanism for the first one is a separate motion filed inside the case you already have. It is heard on its own, it produces its own order, and that order governs the children until the final judgment replaces it.
Two different statutes do the work here, and people run them together constantly. One authorizes temporary custody. The other authorizes temporary money. Knowing which is which changes what you file and what you have to prove.
Which Missouri Statute Allows a Temporary Custody Order?
Section 452.380 RSMo, and the whole of subsection 1 is three sentences.
Section 452.380.1 RSMo provides that “a party to a custody proceeding may move for a temporary custody order. The motion must be supported by an affidavit. The court may award temporary custody after a hearing or, if there is no objection, solely on the basis of the affidavits.”
Read the third sentence twice. There are two routes to a temporary order, not one. A hearing is the route most people picture. The other route is the affidavits alone, and it opens only when nobody objects.
Section 452.380.2 RSMo adds the exit. If the dissolution or legal separation case is dismissed, “any temporary custody order is vacated” unless a parent or the child’s custodian moves to continue the matter as a custody proceeding and the court finds after a hearing that the circumstances require a custody decree. The temporary order does not survive on its own.
What Is a Motion Pendente Lite?
Pendente lite is Latin for pending the litigation, and in Missouri practice the phrase has become the name for the whole package of temporary relief.
A motion styled PDL usually asks for several things at once. Temporary custody and a temporary schedule. Temporary child support. Sometimes temporary maintenance. Often attorney’s fees. Our FAQ on what a PDL motion is covers the filing itself.
The label is a convenience. The authority underneath it is still statute by statute, and the custody piece still comes from Section 452.380 RSMo.
Besides Custody of My Child, What Else Can a Temporary Order Cover?
Money, and the money provisions live in a different section than the custody provision.
Section 452.315.1 RSMo provides that in a proceeding for dissolution of marriage or legal separation, “either party may move for temporary maintenance and for temporary support for each child entitled to support.”
Section 452.315.2 RSMo then lists what else the court can order, and it says the court acts “after notice and hearing” on each of them.
- Property. Restraining a person from transferring, encumbering, concealing or disposing of property “except in the usual course of business or for the necessities of life,” with a duty to notify and to account for extraordinary expenditures
- Conduct. Enjoining a party from “harassing, abusing, molesting or disturbing the peace of the other party or of any child”
- The home. Excluding a party from the family home or the other party’s home “upon a showing that physical or emotional harm would otherwise result”
- Custody and support. “Establishing and ordering compliance with a custody order and providing for the support of each child”
Attorney’s fees come from somewhere else again. Section 452.355.1 RSMo lets the court, after considering “the financial resources of both parties, the merits of the case and the actions of the parties during the pendency of the action,” order one party to pay a reasonable amount toward the other’s cost of “maintaining or defending any proceeding pursuant to sections 452.300 to 452.415.” A PDL motion sits inside that range, which is why fee requests ride along with it.
Note the last clause of that fee statute. It reaches “costs incurred prior to the commencement of the proceeding and after entry of a final judgment.” Our FAQ on who pays attorney fees in a divorce covers the three factors in more detail.
Can I Get Custody of My Child Without a Hearing?
Yes, but only where nobody objects, and Missouri tightened the rule around this in 2023.
Section 452.380.1 RSMo already allowed an award “solely on the basis of the affidavits” where there is no objection. That has been the law since 1974 and it has not been amended since.
What changed is Section 452.375.11 RSMo, which arrived in Senate Bill 35 effective 28 August 2023. It now provides that “no court shall adopt any local rule, form, or practice requiring a standardized or default parenting plan for interim, temporary, or permanent orders or judgments,” and that a court “may enter an interim order in a proceeding under this chapter, provided that the interim order shall not contain any provisions about child custody or a parenting schedule or plan without first providing the parties with notice and a hearing, unless the parties otherwise agree.”
Translated. A court cannot put a schedule on your family through an interim order without either a hearing or your agreement, and it cannot hand you a standard plan and call that the answer. If a temporary schedule is going to exist over your objection, you get to be heard first.
That second half also matters for anyone who assumes there is a normal plan waiting somewhere. There is not. The statewide parenting plan form CAFC501 and the St. Louis County parenting plan form are drafting tools, not defaults. Our FAQ on what a parenting plan is covers what the plan has to contain.
What Happens at a PDL Hearing?
It is a testimonial hearing, which means the court hears live witnesses rather than reading paper.
That is the part people are unprepared for. A contested hearing on temporary custody of my child is not a five minute docket call. Both parents testify. Exhibits go in. Cross examination happens. In a case with real disagreement it can run most of a day.
Which produces the practical problem the temporary process is famous for. A fully contested PDL hearing early in a case can cover much of the same ground the trial will cover later, and you pay for both. That is the honest argument for reaching agreement on a temporary plan, and it is an argument about cost and repetition rather than about what any court is going to do.
It cuts the other way too. If the current arrangement is not working, or if one parent has simply stopped producing the children, a hearing is the only tool that fixes it before trial. Paying twice to cover the same ground is a real cost. Living for two years under an arrangement nobody ordered is also a real cost.
Should You Consent to a Temporary Plan?
Sometimes, and the thing to be careful about is agreeing to a schedule far below what you intend to ask for at trial.
Consent is genuinely useful. It is faster, it is cheaper, it keeps a contested hearing off the calendar, and it lets both parents get on with the case. Section 452.375.11 RSMo expressly contemplates it, since the notice and hearing requirement gives way where “the parties otherwise agree.”
Here is the part worth slowing down for. We are not going to tell you what a judge will do with a temporary schedule at trial, because nobody can tell you that and anyone who does is guessing. What we can tell you is what a temporary order produces, which is a record.
A temporary schedule runs for months. Sometimes years. While it runs it generates evidence that did not exist on the day the case was filed. Whether each parent used the time they had. Whether exchanges worked. Whether either parent moved the schedule around, and how the other responded. Whether the children did well.
None of that is a prediction. It is simply where the facts come from, and it is the reason a temporary plan deserves the same attention as a permanent one. If you would not sign it as a final plan, be clear with yourself about why you are signing it as a temporary one.
Section 452.315.6(1) RSMo does say that a temporary order “does not prejudice the rights of the parties or the child which are to be adjudicated at subsequent hearings in the proceedings.” That is a real protection and it is worth knowing. It also does not erase the months of history the order created while it was in force.
Does a Temporary Order for Custody of My Child Become the Final Order?
Not automatically, and not as a matter of law. The statute ends it.
Section 452.315.6(3) RSMo says a temporary order “terminates when the final judgment is entered or when the petition for dissolution or legal separation is voluntarily dismissed.” The temporary order does not roll over. It stops.
The final custody determination is then made under Section 452.375.2 RSMo, which requires the court to decide custody “in accordance with the best interests of the child,” applies a rebuttable presumption “that an award of equal or approximately equal parenting time to each parent is in the best interests of the child,” and lists eight factors the court must consider and make written findings on where the parents have not agreed on everything.
Three things a temporary order does not decide.
- It does not decide legal custody permanently. Decision making authority is a separate award, covered in our FAQ on joint legal custody
- It does not divide property. Section 452.315.2 can restrain transfers, but division happens at judgment under Section 452.330 RSMo
- It does not set the final support number. Temporary support under Section 452.315 is temporary, and the judgment sets support on its own record
Our FAQ on where children live after a divorce covers the schedule question at judgment, and Missouri child support laws covers the support calculation.
What If the Parents Were Never Married?
The authority is thinner, and that is not a stylistic observation. The temporary order provisions sit in the dissolution chapter, not the paternity one.
Missouri’s Uniform Parentage Act runs from Section 210.817 through Section 210.854 RSMo. You can read the whole of it in the chapter 210 table of contents. What it does not contain is a temporary order section of its own. Section 210.846 RSMo, which is sometimes cited as though it were one, is a confidentiality provision about closed hearings and sealed records.
There is one express bridge. Section 452.315.7 RSMo provides that the court “shall enter a temporary order requiring the provision of child support pending the final judicial determination if there is clear and convincing evidence establishing a presumption of paternity pursuant to section 210.822.” Note what that covers and what it does not. Support, yes. Custody, no.
So this is an open question rather than a settled one. Temporary custody in a paternity case is routinely sought and routinely entered, and it is not the same well marked path that Section 452.380 RSMo gives a divorcing parent. If your case is a paternity case, that difference is worth raising with your attorney before you file rather than after. Our paternity page covers how those cases run.
Can You Appeal a Temporary Order?
Yes in principle, and the practical answer is usually no.
In Scott v. Scott, a 2005 Eastern District decision arising from a PDL judgment that split unreimbursed medical costs, health insurance and daycare for a child with a serious medical condition, the court stated that “a pendente lite order is a final judgment on the merits of the motion from which an appeal may be taken,” and that “an award pendente lite is in the nature of an independent cause of action.”
So the door is open. The difficulty is Section 452.315.6(3) RSMo again. The temporary order terminates when the final judgment is entered, and dissolution cases frequently reach judgment faster than an appeal can be briefed and decided. An appeal of an order that no longer exists has a short life.
If your question is how to fix custody of my child while the case is still running, the realistic tool is not appeal. It is the record you build while the temporary order is running, and a motion to modify the temporary order if the facts change. Section 452.315.6(2) RSMo allows a temporary order to be “revoked or modified prior to final judgment.”
What Should You Do Before You File?
Three things, and none of them require a lawyer to start.
- Write down the actual schedule. Not what the plan says. What has happened, week by week, since the separation. Dates, overnights, who did the pickups
- Get your numbers together. A temporary support request runs on income and expenses, and our FAQ on the statement of income and expenses covers the form that carries them
- Decide what you are actually asking for. A temporary motion that asks for everything and a temporary motion that asks for one specific fix are very different filings, and the second one moves faster
If you are handling any of this on your own, the approved forms and instructions live at Missouri’s self representation resources and the dissolution packet is at the Missouri Courts forms page.
Who Can Help With Temporary Custody in St. Louis?
The first useful conversation is usually about whether you need a temporary order at all, because a fully contested PDL hearing is expensive and not every case needs one.
Bardol Law Firm practices only family law, and we are in the St. Louis County, St. Louis City, St. Charles County and Jefferson County courts regularly. Bring your filed petition if you have one, plus a written account of the schedule as it has actually run since the separation. Most people arrive asking a version of when can I get custody of my child, and the answer usually turns on facts they already have. We will walk through whether a motion makes sense, what it should ask for, and what a hearing would realistically cost against what it would fix. Our child custody page covers how we handle these cases, and our other family law questions and answers cover the rest.
You should not have to chase your attorney for basic updates while a temporary motion is pending. Every client here has a named paralegal on the file, and we generally return calls within one business day.
Family Law, Simplified.
If you are not seeing your children and the case will not reach trial for a year, that is a good first conversation. Contact Bardol Law Firm or call 314.918.0100.
This page is general information about Missouri law and is not legal advice. Every case turns on its own facts. The choice of a lawyer is an important decision and should not be based solely upon advertisements.