Section 2 Origins

• Library: Trust and Estate Legislation 2012

Missouri has long recognized a very strong form of tenancy by the entirety. Tenancy by the entirety, a unique form of property ownership between husband and wife, was long recognized at common law. Otto F. Stifel’s Union Brewing Co. v. Saxy, 201 S.W. 67 (Mo. 1918). The uniqueness of tenancy by the entirety was rooted in the concept that a “[h]usband and wife took and held it [the property] not as separate individuals and by moieties, but as one person, each holding the whole of it.” Id. at 68. For this purpose, the common law viewed a husband and wife as “one flesh and one blood.” Id.

In the estate by entirety neither tenant is seised of a part, or moiety, but both of them have the entire estate, and as this involves in itself a physical impossibility in the case of ordinary individuals it...