The statute of limitations in Missouri is the deadline for starting a lawsuit or filing criminal charges, and it varies widely by the type of case. Most personal injury and property damage lawsuits must be filed within five years. Written contract claims get ten years. Medical malpractice generally gets two. On the criminal side, misdemeanors must be charged within one year, most felonies within three, and the most serious offenses — including murder and any Class A felony — carry no deadline at all. Miss the applicable deadline and the claim is almost always gone, no matter how strong it would have been.
Civil Deadlines by Type of Claim
Missouri groups civil claims by subject matter, and the deadline depends on which category your case falls into.
Personal Injury and Property Damage: Five Years
Section 516.120 gives you five years to file for injuries to a person or their belongings when the claim does not arise from a contract. Car accidents, slip-and-fall cases, and damage to or theft of personal property all fall here.1Missouri Revisor of Statutes. Missouri Revised Statutes Section 516.120 – What Actions Within Five Years
Defamation, Assault, and Related Claims: Two Years
A shorter two-year deadline under Section 516.140 covers libel, slander, assault, battery, false imprisonment, and malicious prosecution. Unpaid minimum wage and overtime claims under the federal Fair Labor Standards Act also fit in this two-year window.2Missouri Revisor of Statutes. Missouri Revised Statutes Section 516.140 – What Actions Within Two Years
Medical Malpractice: Two Years, with a Ten-Year Ceiling
Medical malpractice claims under Section 516.105 generally must be filed within two years of the provider’s error.3Missouri Revisor of Statutes. Missouri Revised Statutes Section 516.105 – Actions Against Health Care and Mental Health Providers Two situations shift the starting point to discovery rather than the date of the error:
- A foreign object left inside your body: the two years run from when you discovered, or reasonably should have discovered, the object.
- Failure to inform you of medical test results: the two years run from when you discovered, or should have discovered, that failure.
Regardless of discovery, Missouri imposes an absolute ten-year cutoff from the date of the original error. For minors, the deadline is either two years after the eighteenth birthday or ten years from the error, whichever is later, but no claim can be filed after the child’s twentieth birthday.3Missouri Revisor of Statutes. Missouri Revised Statutes Section 516.105 – Actions Against Health Care and Mental Health Providers
Wrongful Death: Three Years
A wrongful death claim must be filed within three years, typically measured from the date of death. If an earlier lawsuit is dismissed or reversed on appeal, a new action may be filed within one year of that dismissal, but the one-year extension cannot push past the original three-year deadline.4Missouri Revisor of Statutes. Missouri Revised Statutes Section 537.100 – Limitation of Action, Effect of Absence of Defendant and Nonsuit
Written Contracts: Ten Years
A lawsuit based on a signed writing for the payment of money or property has a ten-year window. That covers promissory notes, formal loan agreements, and similar written obligations, along with warranty covenants in property deeds and civil claims that do not fit any other statutory category.5Missouri Revisor of Statutes. Missouri Revised Statutes Section 516.110 – What Action Shall Be Commenced Within Ten Years
Oral and Informal Contracts: Five Years
Oral agreements and any contracts not specifically covered by the ten-year rule fall under Section 516.120’s five-year window, including implied contracts and informal arrangements.1Missouri Revisor of Statutes. Missouri Revised Statutes Section 516.120 – What Actions Within Five Years
Sale of Goods: Four Years
Contracts for the sale of goods follow Missouri’s version of the Uniform Commercial Code. Section 400.2-725 sets a four-year deadline for breach-of-contract claims involving goods.6Missouri Revisor of Statutes. Missouri Revised Statutes Section 400.2-725 – Statute of Limitations in Contracts for Sale A warranty breach is considered to occur when the goods are delivered, unless the warranty explicitly covers future performance; in that case, the clock starts when the breach is or should have been discovered.
Fraud: Five Years from Discovery, Fifteen-Year Outer Limit
Fraud sits in the five-year category under Section 516.120, but with a built-in discovery provision: the five years do not begin until you actually discover the facts behind the fraud. That discovery must happen within ten years of when the fraud occurred.1Missouri Revisor of Statutes. Missouri Revised Statutes Section 516.120 – What Actions Within Five Years If you still have not discovered the fraud after ten years, the clock starts anyway, giving you until the fifteen-year mark. After that, the claim is gone.
Defective Construction: Ten-Year Repose
Claims for faulty design, planning, or construction of improvements to real property are subject to a ten-year statute of repose under Section 516.097. The ten years run from when the improvement is completed, or from the issuance of an occupancy permit if one was required.7Missouri Revisor of Statutes. Missouri Revised Statutes Section 516.097 – Tort Action Against Architects, Engineers or Builders The limit applies only to parties whose sole connection to the property was designing, planning, or building it, not to owners or occupants. If the builder actively concealed the defect, the cutoff does not apply.
Enforcing a Judgment: Ten Years
Winning a lawsuit is only part of the process. Missouri gives judgment holders ten years from entry of the judgment to revive it through a legal proceeding. After ten years without revival, the judgment can no longer be enforced.8Missouri Revisor of Statutes. Missouri Revised Statutes Section 511.370 – Scire Facias to Revive, May Issue, When
Employment Discrimination: 180 Days
Discrimination claims move on a much tighter schedule than most civil cases. A complaint under the Missouri Human Rights Act must be filed with the Missouri Commission on Human Rights within 180 days of the last discriminatory act.9Missouri Department of Labor and Industrial Relations. File a Complaint of Discrimination If you miss that window but are still within 300 days of the incident, you can file instead with the federal Equal Employment Opportunity Commission.10Missouri Department of Labor and Industrial Relations. How Long Do I Have to File a Complaint These are days, not months, and the deadline runs quickly.
Criminal Prosecution Deadlines
Missouri also limits how long the state has to bring charges. The deadlines rise with the seriousness of the offense:11Missouri Revisor of Statutes. Missouri Revised Statutes Section 556.036 – Time Limitations
- No time limit for murder, first-degree rape, first-degree sodomy (and attempts of those offenses), and any Class A felony.
- Five years for certain property crimes, including second-degree burglary charged as a Class B felony and related offenses under Sections 569.050 and 569.055.
- Three years for all other felonies.
- One year for misdemeanors.
- Six months for infractions.
The criminal clock also pauses in several situations: while the accused is outside Missouri (adding no more than three extra years), while the accused is actively hiding from law enforcement, while another prosecution for the same offense is pending, and while the accused is mentally unfit to stand trial. It also pauses from the time a DNA profile is developed from crime scene evidence until a suspect is identified through a DNA match.11Missouri Revisor of Statutes. Missouri Revised Statutes Section 556.036 – Time Limitations
When Does the Clock Actually Start?
Missouri’s accrual rule, Section 516.100, controls when the filing window opens, and it often confuses people. The deadline does not start when the wrongful act happens. It starts when the resulting harm is actually felt and identifiable. If a single act produces several items of damage over time, the clock begins with the last one, so you can recover for all of them in a single lawsuit.12Missouri Revisor of Statutes. Missouri Revised Statutes Section 516.100 – Period of Limitation Prescribed
That rule matters most when an injury develops gradually. If a defective product causes damage that only becomes apparent months later, the window opens when you first notice (or reasonably should have noticed) the harm, not when you bought the product. The fraud discovery rule is a specific version of this broader principle, with the additional fifteen-year ceiling layered on top.
What Pauses the Civil Clock
Section 516.170 pauses the civil filing deadline for people who are under twenty-one or mentally incapacitated when the claim first arises. For a minor, the standard limitation period begins on the twenty-first birthday. For someone with a mental incapacity, it begins when the incapacity ends.13Missouri Revisor of Statutes. Missouri Revised Statutes Section 516.170 – May Delay Filing of Action, When Medical malpractice is a carved-out exception: minors must file by their twentieth birthday, and the ten-year statute of repose still applies.
Section 516.200 historically paused the civil clock while a defendant was living outside Missouri, but the Missouri Supreme Court held the provision unconstitutional as applied to defendants who move out of state.14Missouri Revisor of Statutes. Missouri Revised Statutes Section 516.200 – If Defendant Be Out of State In practice, a defendant’s relocation no longer stops your deadline. Missouri’s long-arm jurisdiction lets you sue them where they are, and the clock keeps running.