What Is a Statement of Income and Expenses?
A statement of income and expenses is a sworn financial disclosure listing everything you earn, everything that comes out of your pay, and what it costs you to live, filed early in a Missouri family law case and used for the rest of it.
It is not a form you fill in once and forget. The numbers on it feed the child support calculation, they frame every maintenance argument, and they are the document the other side reads before deciding whether to settle.
There is also a widespread misunderstanding about where the requirement comes from, and getting that right changes which form you actually need.
Which Missouri Rule Requires a Statement of Income and Expenses?
No statewide rule and no statute requires it. Your circuit’s local rule does, and that is why the form and the deadline change when you cross a county line.
People assume Rule 88 covers this because Rule 88 is the family law rule. It does not. Rule 88.01 is about the presumed child support amount. It says “when determining the correct amount of child support, a court or administrative agency shall consider all relevant factors, including all relevant statutory factors,” and that “there is a rebuttable presumption that the amount of child support calculated pursuant to Civil Procedure Form No. 14 is the correct amount of child support to be awarded in any judicial or administrative proceeding.” Everything after Rule 88.01 in that rule is mediation and self represented litigants.
The state does publish a form. Form CAFC050, Statement of Income and Expenses, revised 01/01/2018, sits in the Missouri Courts dissolution of marriage forms packet. Publishing a form is not the same as mandating one. The mandate is local.
Here is the St. Louis County version, and it has teeth. Local Rule 68.2 of the 21st Judicial Circuit is titled Filing of Income and Expense and Property Statements. It applies to dissolution, separate maintenance, legal separation, annulment, paternity, custody and support, motions to modify any of those, third party custody and grandparent visitation. It requires the statements to be completed “under oath on the form approved by the court and available from the Office of the Circuit Clerk.” Then the sentence that surprises people.
“Petitioner/Movant shall electronically file financial statements with their first pleading and shall serve them on the other parties at the same time as the first pleading. The Circuit Clerk shall not accept the pleading for filing unless the financial statements are filed, unless they have been waived by a family court judicial officer.”
Note what that does. In St. Louis County the financial statement is not a later step in the case. Without it, the clerk does not accept the petition at all.
The City of St. Louis has its own version at Local Rule 68.4 of the 22nd Judicial Circuit local court rules, carrying the same title. St. Charles County and Jefferson County each maintain their own family court rules covering the same ground. Local rules get amended, so confirm the current version in your county rather than relying on a copy found online.
Which Form Do I Actually Use?
In St. Louis County, the circuit’s own form rather than the state one, which is the single most common wasted afternoon in this process.
Rule 68.2 points to “the form approved by the court and available from the Office of the Circuit Clerk.” That form is CCFC135-WS, Statement of Income and Expenses, revision 07/21, and it is more detailed on household expenses than the statewide form. Its affidavit reads “comes now, being of lawful age and after being duly sworn, states that affiant has read the foregoing Statement of Income and Expenses, and that the facts therein are true and correct according to the affiant’s best knowledge and belief.”
Form CAFC050 is the statewide version and the one to start from where a circuit points at the Missouri Courts website. Both ask for the same categories. Neither is optional once your circuit’s rule applies to your case.
When Is It Due?
Sooner than most people expect, and the deadline for the responding party is not the same in every county.
- The filing party in St. Louis County. With the first pleading, because the clerk will not accept the pleading without it
- The responding party in St. Louis County. Rule 68.2 gives sixty days from service or entry of appearance, whichever is earlier
- Elsewhere. The deadline is whatever the local rule in that circuit says, and it is shorter in some of them than in St. Louis County
Rule 68.2 also forbids a common shortcut. Amounts “shall not state ‘varies’ or ‘TBD’ without approval of a family court judicial officer.” Writing varies in a box is not a way to buy time.
What Goes on the Form?
Gross income at the top, deductions and support obligations in the middle, and household living costs at the bottom, with most lines cross referenced straight into Form 14.
Form CAFC050 asks for monthly gross income from salaries, wages and commissions including bonuses, self employment income, social security benefits other than SSI, retirement and pension income, interest, trust and annuity income, dividends and partnership distributions, unemployment compensation, severance pay, worker’s compensation, disability insurance benefits, veteran’s disability benefits, and military allowances for subsistence and quarters. That total is expressly mapped to Form 14 line 1.
It then asks about means tested benefits, other children living with each party, and maintenance received. On the expense side it asks about court ordered child support for other children, maintenance paid, work related child care, health insurance for the children, uninsured extraordinary medical costs and other extraordinary child rearing costs, each mapped to its Form 14 line, and finally a single catch all line for everything else you spend money on.
That last box is where cases are won and lost. One line covers housing, utilities, transportation, food, clothing, loan payments, insurance and everything else. If your case involves maintenance, a single number in that box is not enough, and it is the reason the St. Louis County form breaks the same ground into far more lines.
Our FAQ on how Missouri child support works covers the Form 14 side, and our child support page covers the wider process.
Why Do These Numbers Matter So Much?
Because the two biggest money questions in a family law case are decided on the factors this statement supplies, and the court has nothing else to work from.
On maintenance, Section 452.335.1 RSMo permits a maintenance order “only if it finds that the spouse seeking maintenance” lacks sufficient property to provide for reasonable needs and is unable to be self supporting through appropriate employment. Both halves of that threshold are financial. Section 452.335.2 then lists the factors, and they read like a tour of the form. “The financial resources of the party seeking maintenance.” “The comparative earning capacity of each spouse.” “The standard of living established during the marriage.” “The obligations and assets.” “The ability of the spouse from whom maintenance is sought to meet his needs while meeting those of the spouse seeking maintenance.” Our spousal support page covers how that analysis runs.
On child support, Section 452.340.1 RSMo directs the court to order support “after considering all relevant factors including” six items.
- The child’s side. The financial needs and resources of the child
- The parents’ side. The financial resources and needs of the parents
- The baseline. The standard of living the child would have enjoyed had the marriage not been dissolved
- The child’s circumstances. The physical and emotional condition of the child, and the child’s educational needs
- The schedule. The physical and legal custody arrangements, including the amount of time the child spends with each parent and the reasonable expenses associated with the custody or visitation arrangements
- Child care. The reasonable work related child care expenses of each parent
Chain those together. Section 452.340 is the statutory source of Rule 88.01, Rule 88.01 makes a correctly calculated Form 14 presumptively correct, and the statement of income and expenses is what fills in Form 14. The numbers propagate.
What Happens If the Numbers Are Wrong?
The most common outcome is not a criminal charge. It is that the numbers get cut, line by line, and the rest of your testimony gets read in that light.
Greenberg v. Greenberg, docket ED99952, decided by the Missouri Court of Appeals for the Eastern District on 10 February 2015 on appeal from the Circuit Court of St. Louis County, is the case to read. On a maintenance modification the wife’s second amended statement claimed roughly $8,304 per month in expenses. The trial court found her reasonable expenses were $6,000, having “considered Wife’s second amended statement of income and expenses and reduced several of her claimed expenses that were not supported by ‘credible evidence.'” The opinion then footnotes the reductions individually, category by category, from medical and dental care to food to home maintenance to lawn care.
Report that case accurately, because the appeal turned on something else. The Court of Appeals reversed and remanded, but on the separate ground that fees for the modification proceeding itself should not have been folded into monthly living expenses at all, since attorney fees are separately provided for by Section 452.355 RSMo. The line by line credibility reductions were not what got reversed.
Sweet v. Sweet, 154 S.W.3d 499, docket WD 63736, Missouri Court of Appeals Western District, 8 February 2005, shows the other half. “Although Husband claimed $2,665.83 in expenses on his Second Amended Income and Expense Statement and testified to that amount, he also admitted at trial that many of those amounts were not correct.” The same opinion records that “Husband had concealed from Wife a $50.00 deduction from each of his paychecks, which he used to purchase savings bonds that he put in his girlfriend’s name.”
There is also a fee consequence written into the statute. Section 452.355.1 RSMo lets the court consider “the financial resources of both parties, the merits of the case and the actions of the parties during the pendency of the action” in deciding whether one party pays the other’s fees. Conduct during the case is an express factor, and a financial statement is conduct during the case.
Is a Statement of Income and Expenses Sworn?
Yes. It is signed under oath before a notary, which puts two criminal statutes in the background and makes the exact wording of the oath worth reading.
The CAFC050 verification says the party “being duly sworn on his or her oath, states that he or she is the Petitioner named above and that the facts stated in this Statement of Income and Expenses are true according to his or her best knowledge, information and belief.” The St. Louis County form uses the same best knowledge formulation.
Section 575.050.1 RSMo defines making a false affidavit as swearing falsely “with purpose to mislead any person” to “a fact which is material to the purpose for which said affidavit is made.” It is a class C misdemeanor, and a class A misdemeanor where done for the purpose of misleading a public servant. Section 575.040 RSMo defines perjury as knowingly testifying falsely to a material fact “with the purpose to deceive,” treats a fact as material if “it could substantially affect, or did substantially affect, the course or outcome of the cause, matter or proceeding,” and makes perjury outside a felony proceeding a class E felony.
Both statutes require intent, and that is the honest reading. Purpose to mislead. Purpose to deceive. Knowingly. The form asks for your best knowledge, information and belief, not for a certified audit. An honest estimate that turns out high is not a crime. The realistic risk of a sloppy statement is the civil one above, which is that the numbers get discounted and your credibility travels with them.
What If I Think My Spouse’s Statement Is False?
Test it inside the case with discovery while the case is open, because the routes available after judgment are narrow and one of them expires in a year.
Discovery exists precisely for this. Bank records, tax returns, payroll records and a deposition are how a number gets checked, and our FAQ on discovery in a divorce case covers the tools.
After judgment, Rule 74.06(b) allows relief from a final judgment for “fraud, misrepresentation, or other misconduct of an adverse party,” and Rule 74.06(c) requires that motion to be made within a reasonable time and “not more than one year after the judgment or order was entered.”
Read that one year limit as a real deadline. It runs from entry of the judgment, not from the day you discovered the problem.
What Does the Statement of Income and Expenses Not Do?
Three things, and each one leads somebody to file the wrong document.
It is not the property and debt statement. That is a separate form covering what you own and what you owe, and our FAQ on dividing marital property and our property division page cover that side of the case.
It is not Form 14. The statement supplies the inputs. Form 14 is the calculation, and the presumption in Rule 88.01 attaches to the calculation rather than to your statement.
It is not a budget the court adopts. It is evidence of what you say your finances are, tested like any other evidence. A temporary support motion runs on it too, which is why our FAQ on PDL motions is worth reading before the first hearing, and the St. Louis County family court page covers where all of this gets filed locally.
Who Can Help With a Statement of Income and Expenses in St. Louis?
Most of the real work here is preparation rather than legal argument, and it goes far better when you gather the records before you fill in a single box.
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. Before your first meeting, pull three months of pay stubs, your last two tax returns with all schedules, three months of statements on every account, your health insurance deduction, and your last twelve months of card statements so the household categories come from records rather than memory. That one afternoon of gathering is what keeps your numbers defensible later. Our other family law questions and answers cover the rest of the process.
You should not have to chase your attorney for basic updates while a filing deadline is running. 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 about to file or you have just been served and the financial statement is the thing blocking you, that is a short 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.