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 has a way of exposing what no longer fits. The year opens its ledger, clean and expectant, and on January 6, 2026, Stephanie Frances Lockler stepped into that newness by filing a petition for dissolution of marriage in the Circuit Court of Jackson County, Missouri, Family Court Division at Independence. Where late December filings often feel like quiet closures—papers signed as the year exhales—this petition arrives with the sharper clarity of beginnings, when endings are no longer postponed.

Stephanie Lockler and David Eugene Lockler, Jr. were married on October 8, 2021, in St. Louis County, a union that endured just over four years before separating on or about October 7, 2025. By the time the calendar turned, the petition states, there remained no reasonable likelihood the marriage could be preserved, rendering it irretrievably broken. There were no children born or adopted of the marriage, and both parties are adults, capable of supporting themselves, with neither seeking maintenance from the other.

Filed through her attorney, Troy J. Leavitt of Troy J. Leavitt Law Firm, LLC, the petition asks the court to dissolve the marriage and to address what remains after shared life recedes into record. Stephanie Lockler requests an equitable division of marital property and debts, or, in the alternative, a finding that any marital settlement agreement is not unconscionable. She further asks that each party’s nonmarital property be set aside as sole and separate, that no maintenance be awarded to either side, and that David Lockler, Jr. be ordered to pay reasonable attorney’s fees and costs. The petition also seeks such other relief as the court deems just and proper.

In the first week of the year, the filing reads less like an echo of the past than a measured decision to begin again.

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