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.
Some marriages do not end with spectacle but with a quiet acknowledgment that the shared language has worn thin. In St. Louis County, that reckoning took legal form when John Buck filed a Petition for Dissolution of Marriage on December 1, 2025, asking the Circuit Court to recognize what time and distance had already made plain. The marriage between John Buck and Elizabeth Holland Saltsman, once registered in Bardstown, Kentucky, had reached a point beyond repair, with no reasonable likelihood of renewal.
The petition recounts that the parties have lived apart since July 30, 2019, occupying separate lives long before the court was asked to intervene. There are no unemancipated children born of the marriage, and Elizabeth is not pregnant. Both John Buck and Elizabeth Holland Saltsman are capable of supporting themselves and do not seek maintenance from one another. Nor does either party require an award of attorney’s fees, so long as the proceedings remain measured and free of unnecessary expense.
Through his counsel, Attorney Patricia K. Susi of Curtis, Heinz, Garrett & O’Keefe, P.C., the petitioner asks the court to dissolve the marriage, equitably divide the marital property and debts, and set aside each party’s respective non-marital property. The petition further requests judicial acknowledgment that the parties’ settlement agreement is fair, just, and not unconscionable, reflecting a negotiated ending rather than a contested one. Finally, the court is asked to order each party to bear their own costs and to grant any further relief deemed proper under Missouri law—an orderly conclusion to a union that has already come apart in practice.
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