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.
In a petition filed on June 13, 2025, in the Circuit Court of St. Louis City, Tonya L. Keith seeks the dissolution of a marriage that has, for nearly a decade, existed in name only. She and Daniel D. Keith were married in Iron County, Missouri, in the summer of 2007. They separated quietly in November 2016, the emotional distance calcifying into geography—her address now in St. Louis, his in Park Hills.
There is no child to be fought over. Their only daughter, born a year before the marriage, is now grown. The narratives that once may have existed—about partnership, about permanence—have since unraveled into a procedural ask: for a name change, for a division of property, for acknowledgment that the marriage is irretrievably broken.
Tonya is represented by attorney Thomas E. Bauer of 4647 Hampton Avenue, a familiar name in Missouri’s domestic courtrooms. Her petition is pointed in its simplicity: she wants her property, her name restored to Tonya Lorene Johnson, and no further entanglements—no maintenance, no debt to share.
This is not a drama of betrayal or grand gestures. It is a legal articulation of the life Tonya already lives, made formal by the court. What is requested is not vindication but recognition: of autonomy, of endings, and of the right to claim one’s name again after carrying someone else’s for too long.
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