Updated September 5, 2026. Quick answer: Missouri’s elective share is not the one-third-of-everything, marriage-length figure most national pages describe. 1/2 of the estate if there are no lineal descendants; 1/3 of the estate if there are lineal descendants
What Missouri actually sets out
| What the statute sets out | What it says |
|---|---|
| Mo. Rev. Stat. Sec. 474.160 (amount) | “one-half of the estate, subject to the payment of claims, if there are no lineal descendants of the testator; or, if there are lineal descendants of the testator, the surviving spouse shall receive one-third of the estate subject to the payment of claims;” |
| The share and what it is measured against | 1/2 of the estate if there are no lineal descendants; 1/3 of the estate if there are lineal descendants; measured against defined broadly: all money and property owned at death, reduced by expenses/allowances/claims, increased by the value of property the spouse already derived from the decedent outside succession and by specified non-probate items (revocable trusts, life insurance, annuities, retirement proceeds). |
| Regime type | flat fraction, not tied to marriage length |
| Can it be waived | waivable before or after marriage by a written contract after full disclosure and fair consideration |
| Time limit to file | within 10 days after the time for contesting the will expires, or within 90 days after final determination of related litigation |
How it works in practice
- The share is measured against defined broadly: all money and property owned at death, reduced by expenses/allowances/claims, increased by the value of property the spouse already derived from the decedent outside succession and by specified non-probate items (revocable trusts, life insurance, annuities, retirement proceeds).
- The statute’s own text does not resolve this cleanly one way or the other for a revocable trust; this page does not take a position on trust planning in this state and a reader should not assume either answer without checking current case law.
- Waiver: Waivable before or after marriage by a written contract after full disclosure and fair consideration.
- The election has to be affirmatively filed on a deadline: within 10 days after the time for contesting the will expires, or within 90 days after final determination of related litigation.
The national picture, including the Uniform Probate Code sliding-scale schedule that a minority of states actually use, is on the elective share calculator page; this page is the record for Missouri specifically, and its own numbers above should be used instead of the calculator’s national default for a Missouri estate. The one thing that reliably defeats an elective share in every state that has one is explained on whether a prenup can waive the elective share. A newly widowed reader working through the fuller list of irreversible decisions, of which this is one, can start from the surviving spouse checklist.
What this page does not settle
- This citation and figure were fetched directly from the state’s own official code site and read against the current text this session.
- A state can amend or repeal this section without the page around it changing, and a detail specific to a reader’s own situation, such as a pending divorce, a premarital agreement, or property held jointly with right of survivorship, can change which part of the statute actually applies.
- Whether a revocable trust changes the outcome in Missouri is explained above; that answer is specific to this state and does not generalize to any other one.
- Every quotation here was read against the source on September 5, 2026. Nothing on this page is legal advice, and the exact dollar or percentage amount a court awards depends on facts this page cannot know.
Whether this statute reaches a given family’s actual facts is decided by a court, not by this page. Nothing here is legal advice, and no one should sign a waiver or forgo an election on the strength of a web page.
Sources
The sources above were retrieved and read against the state text on September 5, 2026. Every quotation on this page was checked against those bytes.