Disclaimer: All facts gleaned from the filings stated hereafter are only as truthful as the petitioner. The tone of this article expresses a style of writing historically employed by America’s greatest writers and, as such, is for opinion purposes only. No intentional harm is due. Do not read if the topic of divorce (even your own) causes you emotional distress. Continue at your own risk.
January carries the old superstition of beginnings, a month that promises clean ledgers and unmarked calendars. Yet midway through that hopeful stretch, on January 16, 2026, David Andrew Wood chose not renewal but reckoning, filing a petition for dissolution of marriage in the Circuit Court of Jackson County, Missouri, at Independence. The filing stands in quiet contrast to the season’s rhetoric of fresh starts—less a resolution than an admission that some endings refuse to wait for spring.
Wood and JoAnn Leigh Wood were married on June 20, 2009, a union registered in the same county now tasked with its unwinding. The couple separated in late November 2025, carrying the weight of four children whose lives, routines, and futures sit at the center of the petition. Wood asks the court to award joint physical and joint legal custody, with his address designated for educational and mailing purposes, and to approve a proposed parenting plan he argues serves the children’s best interests.
The petition further seeks an order directing JoAnn Leigh Wood to pay child support, calculated under Missouri law and retroactive to the filing date, with wage withholding if applicable. Wood requests maintenance, citing his inability to support himself through appropriate employment, while asserting that his spouse has sufficient income to contribute both to support and to his attorney fees and costs.
Marital property and debts, accumulated over years that now read like chapters, are to be divided equitably if no agreement is reached, while each party’s non-marital assets are to be set aside individually. Represented by attorneys David Wylie and Josiah Harper, Wood ultimately asks the court to dissolve a marriage he states is irretrievably broken and to grant any further relief deemed just and proper.
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