How to Expunge a Misdemeanor in Missouri: Eligibility, Filing, and Effects

To expunge a misdemeanor in Missouri, you file a Petition for Expungement in the circuit court where you were convicted, wait at least one year after fully completing your sentence, and pay a $250 state surcharge plus the court’s filing fee. If the prosecutor does not object within 30 days, the judge can grant the order on the papers alone. Once signed, the order seals the conviction from public view and lets you deny it on most applications, with specific exceptions you need to know before you answer any form.

Is Your Misdemeanor Eligible

Missouri’s expungement statute, Section 610.140, works by exclusion. If your offense is not on the barred list, you can petition.¹ The permanent exclusions include any sex offense under Chapter 566 or any offense that triggers sex offender registration, domestic assault at any degree, and any traffic offense committed while holding or required to hold a commercial driver’s license.

Municipal ordinance violations are eligible through the same process. If the ordinance carried a possible jail sentence, it counts toward your lifetime cap just like a state misdemeanor would.

Lifetime Caps

Over your entire life, you can expunge up to three misdemeanors or jailable ordinance violations, plus up to two felonies. Infractions are uncapped.¹ If multiple charges came out of the same course of conduct, you can bundle them in one petition, and the group counts only as the highest-level offense against your cap. Two misdemeanors from the same incident use one slot, not two.

When the One-Year Clock Starts

You cannot file until a full year has passed since you finished every piece of your sentence.¹ The clock does not start at your arrest, your conviction, or even your release. It starts the day the last obligation is cleared: jail time served, probation discharged, every dollar of fines, costs, and restitution paid. An unpaid $50 balance means your year has not begun.

Stay out of trouble during the wait. The statute requires your habits and conduct to show you are not a threat to public safety, and courts look hard at the stretch leading up to your filing. New charges or pending cases in any jurisdiction will almost always sink the petition until they resolve.

What to Gather Before You File

Pull your case records before you touch a form. You will need:

The exact case name and number from the original prosecution.
The specific circuit court where the case was resolved. Your petition must be filed there.
The arrest date and every law enforcement agency involved, including any municipal police department, so the eventual order reaches all the right records.
The prosecuting attorney’s office or municipal attorney who handled the case, who has to be served with notice.

Missouri courts provide a standardized Petition for Expungement form, available through the state courts website or your local circuit clerk. Every offense you want sealed has to go on the same petition.¹ You cannot file piecemeal requests to clean up what you forgot. A wrong case number or a missing agency can keep the clerk from finding your records in the state database, which stalls everything.

Filing Fees

Missouri charges a $250 surcharge on every petition filed under Section 610.140.² That is on top of the standard circuit court filing fee, which varies by county but generally runs around $100. Budget roughly $350 total. The $250 surcharge is not refunded if the judge denies your petition.

If you cannot pay, you can file a motion to proceed in forma pauperis, with a sworn statement of your income, assets, and expenses. Courts evaluate these case by case; not every judge grants them routinely, but the option is there.

After the Petition Is Filed

Once the clerk accepts your petition, the prosecuting attorney or municipal attorney who handled your original case has 30 days to file a written objection.¹ If no objection comes in, the court can decide on the paperwork alone, and many uncontested misdemeanor expungements are granted without the petitioner ever appearing in court.

If the prosecutor objects, the court schedules a hearing. The statute puts a rebuttable presumption in your favor: when your petition asserts that your habits and conduct show you are not a public safety threat and that expungement serves the interests of justice, the law presumes you are right, and the prosecutor has to prove otherwise with a concrete reason.¹ A victim of the original crime also has the right to speak, and the court can find the continuing impact on the victim outweighs the case for sealing the record.

If your petition is denied, you have to wait a full year from the date of dismissal before trying again.¹

What the Order Actually Does

When the judge signs the expungement order, copies go to every agency that holds your records, including the Missouri State Highway Patrol’s central criminal history repository. Your record is reclassified as closed. Closed records are no longer visible to the public or to standard background checks, though they stay accessible to law enforcement, prosecutors, court personnel, and certain regulated employers.³

The records are not destroyed. They are sealed. For most practical purposes, the conviction is treated as if it never happened, and you can legally answer “no” when an employer or landlord asks whether you have been convicted of a crime.¹

When You Still Have to Disclose

The right to deny has hard limits. Missouri law requires you to disclose an expunged offense when applying for:¹

Any state-issued professional license, certificate, or permit.
Gaming licenses or concealed carry permits under Missouri’s firearms statutes.
Paid or unpaid positions with law enforcement, the state lottery, gaming entities, or emergency services providers.
Jobs at federally insured banks, savings institutions, or credit unions.
Positions with insurers or insurance businesses subject to federal disclosure requirements.
Any role from which federal or state law independently bars people with the conviction. The expungement does not override that restriction.

The common thread is federal compliance. These employers screen under federal rules that a state court order cannot override.

Federal Records and Firearms

A Missouri expungement seals your state records. The FBI’s National Instant Criminal Background Check System (NICS) is a separate database and does not update automatically when a state court grants an order. Your old conviction can still appear federally, and you can be denied at a firearms dealer even though Missouri shows your record as clean.

Missouri law treats expungement as fully restoring your civil rights, including firearms rights, but the FBI has no way to know about the order unless someone sends it. To clear the federal side, submit a copy of your expungement order to the FBI, and consider opening a Voluntary Appeal File to get the federal record corrected. Certain domestic violence convictions carry permanent federal restrictions under the Lautenberg Amendment that no state expungement can undo.

Private Background Check Companies

Commercial background screening companies build their own databases by scraping court records. The court notifies state agencies when it grants expungement; it does not notify private data aggregators that may have already copied your record. Without a direct nudge from you, an expunged conviction can sit in those systems for months or years and show up on a landlord’s or employer’s screening report.

Once you have the signed order, send a copy to the major background check services and request that they update their files. If one of them keeps reporting an expunged conviction after being notified, the federal Fair Credit Reporting Act requires consumer reporting agencies to maintain accurate records, which gives you a path to make them stop.

1
Missouri Revisor of Statutes. Missouri Code 610.140 – Expungement of Certain Criminal Records
2
Missouri Revisor of Statutes. Missouri Code 488.650 – Expungement Cases Under Section 610.140, Surcharge, Amount
3
Missouri State Highway Patrol. Criminal Justice Information Services FAQs