Effective 28 Aug 2008, see footnote

*211.021. Definitions. — **1. As used in this chapter, unless the context clearly requires otherwise:

(1) "Adult" means a person seventeen years of age or older except for seventeen-year-old children as defined in this section;

(2) "Child" means any person under seventeen years of age and shall mean, in addition, any person over seventeen but not yet eighteen years of age alleged to have committed a status offense;

(3) "Juvenile court" means the juvenile division or divisions of the circuit court of the county, or judges while hearing juvenile cases assigned to them;

(4) "Legal custody" means the right to the care, custody and control of a child and the duty to provide food, clothing, shelter, ordinary medical care, education, treatment and discipline of a child. Legal custody may be taken from a parent only by court action and if the legal custody is taken from a parent without termination of parental rights, the parent's duty to provide support continues even though the person having legal custody may provide the necessities of daily living;

(5) "Parent" means either a natural parent or a parent by adoption and if the child is illegitimate, "parent" means the mother;

(6) "Shelter care" means the temporary care of juveniles in physically unrestricting facilities pending final court disposition. These facilities may include:

(a) "Foster home", the private home of foster parents providing twenty-four-hour care to one to three children unrelated to the foster parents by blood, marriage or adoption;

(b) "Group foster home", the private home of foster parents providing twenty-four-hour care to no more than six children unrelated to the foster parents by blood, marriage or adoption;

(c) "Group home", a child care facility which approximates a family setting, provides access to community activities and resources, and provides care to no more than twelve children;

(7) "Status offense", any offense as described in subdivision (2) of subsection 1 of section 211.031.

2. The amendments to subsection 1 of this section, as provided for in this act***, shall not take effect until such time as appropriations by the general assembly for additional juvenile officer full-time equivalents and deputy juvenile officer full-time equivalents shall exceed by one million nine hundred thousand dollars the amount spent by the state for such officers in fiscal year 2007 and appropriations by the general assembly to single first class counties for juvenile court personnel costs shall exceed by one million nine hundred thousand dollars the amount spent by the state for such juvenile court personnel costs in fiscal year 2007 and notice of such appropriations has been given to the revisor of statutes.

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(L. 1957 p. 642 § 211.020, A.L. 1978 H.B. 1634, A.L. 1982 S.B. 497, A.L. 2008 H.B. 1550)

*This section was amended by both S.B. 793 and S.B. 800, 2018. Due to a delayed effective date, both versions are printed.

**Contingent effective date.

**Revisor's Note: The General Assembly had not appropriated the amounts specified in this section as of the date of the general republication of the Revised Statutes of Missouri in 2016.

*** "This act" (H.B. 1550, 2008) contained numerous sections. Consult Disposition of Sections table for a definitive listing.

(1979) Statutory enactment readopting discriminatory language which exempts fathers of illegitimate children from definition of "parent", but not limited to the purpose of annulling juvenile court rule that changed definition of "parent", did not annul or amend court rule. Miller v. Russell (A.), 593 S.W.2d 598.