Missouri gives creditors ten years to sue on a writing for the payment of money, and five years on any other contract. The fork is set by RSMo § 516.110(1) and § 516.120(1), and which side a credit card balance lands on is worth five years. The statutes set up that choice without resolving it.
The deadlines, and where each one is written
| What is being collected | Deadline to file suit | Statute |
|---|---|---|
| Any writing, sealed or unsealed, for the payment of money or property | 10 years | RSMo § 516.110(1) |
| All other contracts, obligations, or liabilities | 5 years | RSMo § 516.120(1) |
| Note payable at a definite time | 10 years | RSMo § 400.3-118(a) |
| Relief not otherwise provided for | 10 years | RSMo § 516.110(3) |
| A judgment | Presumed paid after 10 years | RSMo § 516.350 |
Missouri’s promissory note period is another place where the state departs from the pattern most guides assume. Where the uniform commercial code gives notes six years, Missouri enacted ten in § 400.3-118(a) and added that “the statutes of limitation in chapter 516 shall not apply to this section.” Citing six years for a Missouri note imports a rule the legislature declined to adopt.
Five years or ten? What the code settles and what it leaves open
The structure is clean. Section 516.120(1) covers “all actions upon contracts, obligations or liabilities, express or implied, except those mentioned in section 516.110.” So if a claim is an action upon a writing for the payment of money, it gets ten years; if it is any other contract claim, it gets five. There is no third category for consumer debt.
What the code never does is define what counts as “any writing… for the payment of money or property.” There is no definitions section in chapter 516, no list, and no test. The words credit card, open account, and account stated appear nowhere in the chapter.
What this means in practice: the five-versus-ten question in Missouri turns entirely on whether a court treats the particular paperwork behind your account as a writing for the payment of money. That is a case-law question, and the swing is five years. Treat any flat statement that Missouri credit card debt is ten years, or five, as an approximation rather than something the statute establishes.
When the clock starts
Missouri’s accrual rule is more specific than most. Under § 516.100, a cause of action is not deemed to accrue “when the wrong is done or the technical breach of contract or duty occurs, but when the damage resulting therefrom is sustained and is capable of ascertainment, and, if more than one item of damage, then the last item.”
Section 516.160 adds a rule for accounts, but read its conditions closely: it applies to “a mutual, open and current account, where there have been reciprocal demands between the parties,” and then runs accrual from the last item on the adverse side. Whether an ordinary one-directional credit card account satisfies both the mutuality and reciprocal-demands conditions is not something the statute answers.
What restarts the clock in Missouri, and the payment exception
Section 516.320 is titled, in the Revisor’s own heading, “Actions barred, only revived by written promise.” Its text requires that no acknowledgment or promise counts “unless such acknowledgment or promise be made or contained by or in some writing subscribed by the party chargeable thereby.” A writing is required, and “subscribed” means the debtor must have signed it.
Then § 516.340 carves payments out of that requirement entirely:
Nothing contained in sections 516.320 and 516.330 shall alter, take away or lessen the effect of a payment of any principal or interest made by any person.
Two things follow. First, a payment is not subject to the signed-writing rule, so the protection § 516.320 gives against informal revival does not extend to payments. Second, and more sharply, note the phrase “made by any person.” Section 516.330 shields a joint debtor from being bound by another’s acknowledgment or promise, but that shield is written against acknowledgments and promises, and § 516.340 preserves the effect of a payment against both sections. A co-signer’s payment therefore does not sit behind the same protection as a co-signer’s signature.
What § 516.340 does not do is state what effect a payment has. It preserves that effect without defining it, so the common assertion that a partial payment restarts the Missouri clock is a case-law proposition rather than a statutory one. The defensible statutory statement is narrower: a payment is exempt from the signed-writing requirement.
Missouri debt collection statute of limitations: how little state law there is
Missouri has no state equivalent of the federal Fair Debt Collection Practices Act, no debt collector licensing act, and no time-barred debt statute. Full-text searches of the Revised Statutes for “time-barred,” “outlawed,” and the phrase “consumer debt” return no matches at all.
The state’s entire collection-agency code is a single section. Section 425.300 permits collection agencies to take assignment of claims in their own name and sue on them, provided the agency appears through a licensed Missouri attorney. There is no prohibition on suing after the limitations period, no revival prohibition, and no notice a collector must send telling you a debt is too old to sue on. Protections in Missouri come from federal law.
Two provisions still work in a consumer’s favor. Section 516.190 is a borrowing statute: “Whenever a cause of action has been fully barred by the laws of the state, territory or country in which it originated, said bar shall be a complete defense to any action thereon, brought in any of the courts of this state.” Where an account originated outside Missouri and is already dead there, that is a complete defense here. And § 516.350 provides that a judgment is conclusively presumed paid ten years after it was rendered, revived, or last credited with a payment entered on the record, after which “no execution, order or process shall issue thereon.” That is genuine extinguishment, but it applies to judgments only, not to the underlying debt.
How often Missouri consumers report collection problems
Missouri consumers filed 3,726 debt collection complaints with the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau in the 12 months ending August 26, 2026, which is 1.2% of the 323,584 filed nationwide and ranks 23rd among reporting states.
Of those, 930, or 25% of the Missouri total, were categorized as a collector taking or threatening to take negative or legal action, against 25% nationally.
These are raw complaint counts, not rates. They are not adjusted for population, and a complaint is an allegation the CFPB has published, not a finding that a company broke the law. The figures refresh weekly from the CFPB’s public database.
If you are sued on a debt you believe is too old
Missouri Rule of Civil Procedure 55.08 lists the statute of limitations among the affirmative defenses a party “shall set forth,” and it adds a requirement worth noting: a pleading raising an affirmative defense “shall contain a short and plain statement of the facts showing that the pleader is entitled to the defense.” Naming the defense is not enough; the dates have to be pleaded.
Because Missouri’s periods run long, ten years on a writing, an old Missouri account can still be well inside the deadline. Work out the date of the last payment before assuming otherwise, and be aware that making a payment now carries consequences the signed-writing rule does not protect against. Court deadlines are unforgiving, so this is a point at which speaking with a Missouri attorney or a legal aid organization is worth the call.
How Missouri compares
The same question gets a different answer a state line away. These are the closest comparisons to Missouri:
- Illinois: the other ten-year written period
- Iowa: ten years written, five otherwise
- West Virginia: ten years on a signed writing
The full comparison table covers every state we have published.
Sources and verification
Statutes quoted from the Revised Statutes of Missouri published by the Revisor of Statutes: § 516.110, § 516.120, §§ 516.100, 516.130, 516.160, 516.190, 516.300, 516.310, 516.320, 516.330, 516.340, 516.350; § 400.3-118; § 425.300; and ch. 407. Rule 55.08 is published by the Missouri judiciary at courts.mo.gov and is not part of the Revised Statutes. The Revisor states that statutory language “enacted during a legislative session are updated and available on this website on the effective date of such enacted statutory section,” and each section carries its own effective date; note that most of the core limitations sections date to the 1939 revision, and the Revisor cautions that “effective dates prior to 1940 may not be the actual effective date.” Text retrieved August 26, 2026. Complaint data: CFPB Consumer Complaint Database, filtered to the Debt collection product and the Missouri state field over a rolling 12-month window, re-queried weekly by this site. Our data sources and update policy lists every figure on this site that refreshes automatically and how often.
This page explains what the Missouri statutes say. It is general information, not legal advice. Whether a particular account is a writing for the payment of money, and what effect a partial payment has, are questions the code does not answer and this page does not attempt to resolve.
Frequently asked questions
How long can a debt collector pursue an old debt in Missouri?
A collector may contact you indefinitely, but the deadline to sue is ten years on a writing for the payment of money or property under RSMo § 516.110(1) and five years on any other contract under § 516.120(1). Promissory notes also carry ten years under § 400.3-118(a), rather than the six years most states apply.
Is Missouri credit card debt five years or ten years?
The code does not say. Section 516.120(1) covers contracts “except those mentioned in section 516.110,” which gives ten years to an action upon a writing for the payment of money, but chapter 516 never defines what qualifies and never mentions credit cards. Which side a particular account falls on is decided by the courts.
Does making a payment restart the statute of limitations in Missouri?
Section 516.320 requires an acknowledgment or promise to be in a writing signed by the person being charged, but § 516.340 exempts payments from that rule, preserving “the effect of a payment of any principal or interest made by any person” without stating what that effect is. The safe statutory reading is that a payment is not subject to the signed-writing requirement; whether it restarts the clock is a matter of case law.
Can a time-barred debt still appear on my Missouri credit report?
Yes. Missouri bars the action rather than extinguishing the debt, and the state has no time-barred debt statute or required disclosure. Credit reporting runs on a separate federal clock, generally seven years for most negative account information.