Missouri Judgment Collection: A Presumption, Not a Deadline
Missouri does not expire a judgment. Section 516.350 presumes it paid ten years after rendition and then makes that presumption conclusive, so no execution, order or process may issue and no suit may be maintained on it for any purpose whatever. Here is what resets the clock and what quietly fails to.
The Short Version
Missouri counts from rendition, not entry. Under section 516.350 a judgment is presumed paid ten years after the original rendition, ten years after a revival obtained on personal service, or ten years after the last payment duly entered upon the record – and once the period runs, the presumption is conclusive. Section 511.370 bars any scire facias after ten years from rendition. The lien under 511.360 also commences on the day of rendition, lasts ten years for judgments rendered or revived after August 28, 1998, and reaches after-acquired real estate. Unpaid-rent judgments may be revived by publication.
Watch: Missouri Judgment Collection: The Ten-Year Presumption
The Missouri presumption, summarised – then the provisions themselves.
Watch Overview
Missouri Does Not Set a Deadline
Section 516.350 does not say a Missouri judgment expires. It says the judgment is presumed paid – and then makes the presumption conclusive.
The distinction sounds academic until it changes an answer. Most states in this family bar something: an execution, an action, a lien. Missouri instead declares a fact. Any judgment, order or decree out of a court of record is, in the statute's words, "presumed to be paid and satisfied" once ten years have expired "from the date of the original rendition thereof" – and once the full period has run, the judgment "shall be conclusively presumed to be paid, and no execution, order or process shall issue thereon, nor shall any suit be brought, had or maintained thereon for any purpose whatever."
Read the last five words again. Not merely that execution is barred, but that no suit may be maintained on the judgment for any purpose whatever. There is no residual use for a Missouri judgment that has run its course – no setoff argument, no revival application, no basis for a fresh action. The presumption has swallowed it.
The trigger is worth naming precisely because it is not the one most of this family uses. Missouri counts from the date of the original rendition. Not entry, not docketing, not the filing of a judgment roll. A creditor who diaries a Missouri file from the clerk's entry stamp is diarising the wrong date, and the error runs against the creditor whenever entry followed rendition.
Certain judgments sit outside subsection 1 altogether: those awarding child support or maintenance, and those dividing pension, retirement, life insurance or other employee benefits in connection with a dissolution, legal separation or annulment where payments are made over time or in the future. Subsections 2 and 3 give those their own rule – each periodic payment is presumed paid ten years from the date that payment was due, unless the judgment has been revived under subsection 1.
Three Events That Restart the Ten Years
Section 516.350 subsection 1 names them, and each has its own conditions.
| Event | New ten years runs from | The condition attached |
|---|---|---|
| Original rendition | The date of rendition | This is the default and needs nothing from anyone |
| Revival of the judgment | The date of revival | Only where revival was "upon personal service duly had upon the defendant or defendants" |
| A payment on the judgment | The last payment so made | Only where the payment has been "duly entered upon the record" |
| Revival of an unpaid-rent judgment | The date of revival | May be revived on publication under section 506.160; personal service not required |
Notice what the second and third rows have in common: neither works on its own facts. A revival that was accomplished without personal service does not reset the presumption. A payment the debtor actually made does not reset it either unless somebody entered it on the record of the judgment. Missouri is not asking what happened; it is asking what the court file says happened. That makes the circuit clerk's record, rather than the creditor's ledger, the document that decides how much time is left. In child support and maintenance matters subsection 4 says so expressly – a payment duly entered on the record includes the recording of payments or credits in the automated child support system created under chapter 454 by the family support division or the payment center.
"Duly Entered Upon the Record"
The four words that decide whether a decade of partial payments bought the creditor any time at all.
A Missouri creditor who has been receiving something – twenty-five dollars a month, an occasional lump sum, a tax refund intercept – naturally assumes the judgment is alive. Subsection 1 does not agree unless the payments were entered on the record. The clock restarts from "the last payment so made", and "so made" refers back to a payment "duly entered upon the record thereof."
The practical consequence lands on old accounts and on assigned paper. A file that changed hands twice, whose payment history lives in a servicing system rather than in the circuit court file, may be worth less time than its own ledger suggests. Conversely a judgment that looks dead on the docket may have a recorded partial payment nobody in the current chain knows about. Neither question can be answered from the collection file; both are answered from the court record.
Subsection 1 closes with a sentence that shows how narrowly this is read: "An action to emancipate a child, and any personal service or order rendered thereon, shall not act to revive the support order." Personal service in a related proceeding is not the personal service the revival branch requires. The legislature had to say so, which tells you the argument had been made.
For a creditor the working rule is simple and unwelcome: reconstruct the record entries before making any assumption about remaining time. That is a court-file exercise, county by county, and it is the first thing worth doing on a Missouri judgment of uncertain age. Where the debtor has moved and the file has aged, our judgment debtor location work runs in parallel with it.
The Rent Judgment Exception
In 2014 Missouri added a route to revival that does not require finding the debtor at all – and it exists only for judgments awarding unpaid rent.
Subsection 5 of section 516.350 reads in full: "Any judgment, order, or decree awarding unpaid rent may be revived upon publication consistent with the publication requirements of section 506.160 and need not be personally served on the defendant." It arrived with the 2014 legislation and it is narrow, deliberate and genuinely unusual.
Everywhere else in subsection 1, revival that resets the ten years has to be "upon personal service duly had upon the defendant". That is a locating requirement in substance: a creditor who cannot find the debtor cannot revive, and a judgment quietly runs out of time. For unpaid-rent judgments the legislature removed exactly that obstacle. A Missouri landlord whose former tenant has vanished can still revive by publication.
It is worth being precise about what the subsection does and does not do. It changes the service requirement for revival of a rent judgment. It does not enlarge the ten years, it does not create a lien, and it does not tell a creditor where the debtor or the debtor's assets are – a revived judgment with no located debtor is a live claim against nobody in particular. Publication preserves the right; it does not collect anything. The practical sequence we see work is revive to protect the time, then locate to make it worth something. Our guide to collecting a rent judgment after a tenant disappears covers the second half.
The Lien Runs From Rendition Too
Section 511.360 sets the lien on real estate, and it has a transitional rule that still matters for very old paper.
| Feature | What section 511.360 provides |
|---|---|
| When the lien commences | "On the day of the rendition of the judgment" |
| How long it continues | Ten years, subject to revival – but this duration applies only to judgments rendered or revived after August 28, 1998 |
| Judgments or decrees entered before that date | The lien continues for three years from the date the lien commenced |
| Property reached | Real estate owned when the judgment was rendered and real estate acquired after the rendition |
| Two or more judgments rendered at the same term | As between the parties entitled to them, the lien commences on the last day of the term at which they are rendered |
The after-acquired clause is the useful half for a creditor and the same-term clause is the trap for a lawyer. Missouri extends the lien to real estate the debtor buys later, which means a lien recorded against a debtor who owned nothing is not necessarily worthless. But where two judgments came out of the same term of court, priority between those creditors is not decided by which was rendered first – all of them date from the last day of the term. How the recording step differs across the country is set out in our judgment lien guide by state; Missouri's row is this section compressed to a line.
Scire Facias, and Its Hard Edge
Section 511.370 is two clauses long and the second one is the whole story.
"The plaintiff or his legal representative may, at any time within ten years, sue out a scire facias to revive a judgment and lien; but after the expiration of ten years from the rendition of the judgment, no scire facias shall issue." Missouri kept the common-law writ, gave it a decade, and then shut the door with an express prohibition rather than a limitation defence.
That drafting matters. A limitation period is ordinarily something a defendant has to raise. "No scire facias shall issue" is an instruction to the court. There is nothing for a debtor to waive by failing to appear, and nothing for a creditor to argue about diligence or concealment. The instrument simply cannot be issued.
Line 511.370 up against 516.350 and the Missouri calendar becomes a single ten-year block measured from rendition, inside which everything must happen: the scire facias that revives judgment and lien, the personal service that makes a revival count for the presumption, and any recorded payment that would restart it. A creditor at year nine has a full set of options. A creditor at year ten and one day has none of them, and the reason is not that a defence became available – it is that the writ became unissuable and the presumption became conclusive on the same date. The Revisor of Statutes publishes the presumption itself at section 516.350.
Ten Percent, For Residents Only
Missouri gives a head of family a much lower garnishment ceiling than the federal floor – and attaches a residency condition to it.
Section 525.030.2(1) sets the maximum share of aggregate earnings for any workweek, after deductions required by law, at the least of three figures: twenty-five percent; the amount by which those earnings exceed thirty times the federal minimum hourly wage under section 6(a)(1) of the Fair Labor Standards Act; or ten percent, on the condition the statute attaches – that the employee both heads a family and resides in Missouri.
The residency clause is easy to skim past and it decides real cases. A debtor who heads a household but lives across the state line – in Kansas, in Illinois, in Arkansas – is not within the ten percent branch on its own terms, even where the judgment is a Missouri judgment and the employer is a Missouri employer. Two debtors on the same payroll can be subject to different ceilings for no reason other than which side of the river they sleep on.
The usual carve-outs apply: subsection 2(2) lifts the restrictions for a court order for the support of any person, an order of a bankruptcy court under chapter XIII, and any debt due for state or federal tax. Subsection 2(3) supplies the arithmetic for longer pay periods, treating a calendar month as four and one third workweeks and a semimonthly period as two and one sixth, and subsection 2(4) applies the restrictions to sequestration of the wages of employees of political subdivisions. Our Missouri wage garnishment page works the calculation through; what belongs on this page is that the ceiling depends on a fact about the debtor's household and a fact about the debtor's residence.
Where Missouri Files Lose Their Time
Every one of these is a record problem wearing a legal costume.
The calendar was built from entry
516.350 and 511.360 both run from rendition. Where entry came later, a creditor counting from the entry stamp believes there is more time left than there is.
Payments were never entered on the record
A decade of receipts restarts nothing unless the payments were duly entered upon the record of the judgment. The ledger is not the record.
Revival happened without personal service
Only revival "upon personal service duly had upon the defendant" resets the presumption. A revival obtained another way may not have bought the time it appears to have bought.
The debtor could not be served in time
Outside the unpaid-rent branch, revival needs personal service – which means an address, which means the locating work has to be finished before year ten, not started then.
Only one county was covered
The 511.360 lien is county-based. Real estate the debtor bought after rendition is reachable, but only where the lien exists in that county.
The garnishment ceiling was assumed
Ten percent applies to a head of family who is a resident of Missouri. Assuming it for a cross-border debtor, or ignoring it for a resident one, misprices the file in opposite directions.
How We Work a Missouri File
The record first, because in Missouri the record is what the statute asks about.
Establish the date of rendition
From the court file, separately from any entry date, because both 516.350 and 511.360 count from rendition.
Reconstruct the record entries
Recorded payments, any revival and how service was obtained on it – the facts that decide whether the presumption has been reset and when.
Map the real estate
County by county, including property acquired after rendition, since 511.360 reaches after-acquired real estate.
Locate the debtor for service
Revival outside the unpaid-rent branch needs personal service. An address that will support service is the deliverable, not an address that will support a letter.
Identify employer and household
Employer of record, and whether the debtor is a head of a family resident in Missouri, because that is what selects the ten percent ceiling.
Return sourced findings
Documents, dates and provenance, so counsel can test each fact before it is used in a scire facias application.
What This Firm Does on a Missouri File
Records research with boundaries stated before the work starts.
Section 516.350 asks whether something was entered on the record. Our own position is stated the same way – written down before the work rather than produced afterwards – so here it is. This is a public-records and skip-tracing research house. No one here holds a Missouri private investigator licence, and nothing on this page pretends otherwise. The layer we add to a Missouri judgment is factual: the rendition date in the circuit court file, the recorded payment entries, the counties holding real estate, the payroll a garnishment would attach to.
Intake turns on a single question – what lawful purpose is this research for, and is that genuinely the purpose. Enforcing your own Missouri judgment answers it. A wish to know where a former spouse, tenant or business partner has gone does not, whatever heading the file carries. Pretexting is off the table entirely: no one from here telephones a circuit clerk, a recorder of deeds, a payroll office or a bank pretending to be somebody else, and no one misstates whose enquiry it is to get a faster answer.
Some Missouri files we hand straight back. If the subject fled abuse, holds the protection of a Missouri order of protection, or is enrolled in an address confidentiality programme, the research does not happen. An owed debt is not a counterweight to that, and neither is a client's frustration. Where a requester wants the reasoning, we give it; where they want the answer changed, they will need a different firm.
One further limit, and it is a statutory one. Consumer reporting agency is not what this firm is, and a consumer report is not what a Missouri file produces. Eligibility decisions about hiring, renting, lending or insuring cannot be made on it – those need a consumer reporting agency operating under the Fair Credit Reporting Act, and we point requesters there instead of accepting the work. Read this page as general legal information about Missouri statutes rather than legal advice; a Missouri attorney is who turns it into a strategy. Where assets sit outside the state, our Missouri exemptions page and the skip tracing services overview take it further.
Who Sends Us Missouri Judgments
Holders of Missouri paper whose remaining time depends on a record nobody has read recently.
Judgment creditors
Holding a Missouri judgment of uncertain age, where whether the presumption has been reset is a court-file question.
Assignees and buyers of judgments
Where the payment history lives in a servicing system and the record entries that actually count for 516.350 have never been checked.
Missouri landlords
Holding unpaid-rent judgments that can be revived by publication under subsection 5, and still need a located debtor to be worth anything.
Creditors'-rights counsel
Needing rendition dates, recorded revivals and a county-level property picture before deciding whether scire facias is still available.
Commercial creditors
Chasing a Missouri business debtor whose registered agent, payroll and banking have all moved since rendition.
Family-law creditors
Where periodic support or benefit-division awards run on the separate clocks in subsections 2 and 3 rather than the general rule.
If the legal position is settled and the facts are missing, that is where we are useful. If it is the other way round, a Missouri lawyer is the better first call. Where the debtor has left the state entirely, Missouri skip tracing services is the starting point for the locating half.
Our Commitment
A Missouri file often turns on whether something was entered on the record, and that is a question a court file answers or nobody does. Where the entries are ambiguous or absent, we report the ambiguity instead of resolving it for you – and we tell you which county file we looked at and when.
Frequently Asked Questions
How long is a judgment enforceable in Missouri?
Section 516.350 presumes a judgment paid ten years after the date of the original rendition, or ten years after a revival upon personal service, or ten years after the last payment duly entered upon the record. After that the judgment is conclusively presumed paid and no execution, order or process may issue on it.
Does the Missouri clock run from entry or rendition?
Rendition. Section 516.350 says "ten years from the date of the original rendition thereof", and section 511.360 says the lien "shall commence on the day of the rendition of the judgment." Neither runs from the clerk's entry.
Do partial payments extend a Missouri judgment?
Only if they were duly entered upon the record of the judgment. Section 516.350 restarts the ten years from "the last payment so made", referring to a payment entered on the record. Payments recorded only in a creditor's or servicer's ledger do not reset it.
How do I revive a Missouri judgment?
By scire facias under section 511.370, which may be sued out at any time within ten years – and after ten years from rendition, no scire facias shall issue. For the presumption in 516.350 to be reset, the revival must be upon personal service duly had upon the defendant.
Is there an exception for unpaid rent judgments?
Yes. Section 516.350 subsection 5 provides that a judgment, order or decree awarding unpaid rent may be revived upon publication consistent with section 506.160 and need not be personally served on the defendant.
How long is a Missouri judgment lien on real estate?
Section 511.360 gives the lien ten years from the day of rendition, subject to revival, for judgments rendered or revived after August 28, 1998. For judgments entered before that date the lien continued for three years from the date it commenced.
Does a Missouri judgment lien reach property bought later?
Yes. Section 511.360 says the lien "shall extend as well to the real estate acquired after the rendition thereof, as to that which was owned when the judgment or decree was rendered."
How much of a Missouri debtor's wages can be garnished?
Section 525.030 caps it at the least of twenty-five percent of earnings after legally required deductions, the amount exceeding thirty times the federal minimum hourly wage, or ten percent where the employee is the head of a family and a resident of Missouri.
Trace a Missouri Judgment Debtor
Send the county, the rendition date if you have one, and whatever the file holds on the debtor. Back comes the supported record, plus an honest list of what it will not carry.
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