Marler Law Partners

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Marler Law Partners We are trauma-informed lawyers. We don’t “handle cases,” we represent real people. We believe in a person-centered approach to practicing law.

DWI, Criminal Defense, Divorce, Child Custody, Child Support, Paternity, Non-Support, Step-Parent Adoption, Adoption, Probate, Guardianship, and Appeals.

Today's about celebrating the person who built this firm from an idea into what it's become.Sara Marler didn't set out t...
10/16/2026

Today's about celebrating the person who built this firm from an idea into what it's become.

Sara Marler didn't set out to run a typical law firm, and it shows. From bringing a therapist into the intake process to insisting that clients are treated like people first and cases second, every part of how this team operates traces back to her vision for what family law could actually be.

Great leadership isn't about being the loudest voice in the room. It's about setting a standard and trusting your team to rise to it, again and again. That's exactly what we've gotten to work under.

Happy Boss's Day, Sara. Thank you for building something worth showing up for.

The biggest misconception about a prenup is that wanting one means you're expecting the marriage to fail. In reality, a ...
10/15/2026

The biggest misconception about a prenup is that wanting one means you're expecting the marriage to fail. In reality, a well-built prenup is just two people getting clear on their financial life together before it starts, and that clarity tends to strengthen a marriage rather than threaten it.

Where prenups go wrong usually comes down to a few avoidable mistakes. One spouse presents it right before the wedding, leaving no real time to review it, which can be enough to get it thrown out later. Full financial disclosure gets skipped or rushed, so one party never actually understood what they were agreeing to. The terms end up vague instead of specific about assets and debts, which weakens enforceability rather than strengthening it. Or the agreement gets treated as one person's document handed to the other to sign, instead of something built together.

A prenup also cannot dictate child custody, no matter what's written into it, and it cannot include terms that are so one sided a court would call it unconscionable. If either of those things happen, the whole agreement is at risk.

Done right, with real time, honest disclosure, and each person represented by their own attorney, a prenup becomes a foundation, not a contingency plan. At Marler Law Partners, we help couples build agreements that hold up and actually reflect what they agreed to. If you're getting ready to have this conversation, we're here to help you do it well.

Today we pause to honor the history, resilience, and living cultures of Indigenous peoples across this country.Indigenou...
10/12/2026

Today we pause to honor the history, resilience, and living cultures of Indigenous peoples across this country.

Indigenous Peoples' Day is a chance to recognize the strength of communities who have endured generations of hardship and injustice, and who continue to preserve their traditions, languages, and identities today. That resilience deserves to be seen and honored, not folded into a single day and forgotten.

At Marler Law Partners, we believe every family and every community carries its own story worth respecting. Today, we're listening and learning alongside everyone taking time to recognize the history and the people this day is truly about.

Mental health awareness usually gets talked about like it's separate from legal problems. In our world, it rarely is.Div...
10/10/2026

Mental health awareness usually gets talked about like it's separate from legal problems. In our world, it rarely is.

Divorce, custody battles, and family conflict take a real toll, not just emotionally but on the nervous system itself. Trouble sleeping, difficulty concentrating, feeling hyper vigilant or completely numb, are common responses to genuinely hard circumstances, not signs that something is wrong with you.

That's part of why we built our practice the way we did. Our in-house therapist works alongside our legal team, because we believe people navigating a legal crisis deserve support for the whole picture, not just the paperwork.

On World Mental Health Day, we want to say plainly: if you're in the middle of something hard right now, taking care of your mental health isn't separate from taking care of your case. It's part of it.

At Marler Law Partners, we see you as a whole person first. If you need support, we're here.

Nine years ago, Marler Law Partners started with an idea that felt a little unconventional at the time: what if a family...
10/08/2026

Nine years ago, Marler Law Partners started with an idea that felt a little unconventional at the time: what if a family law firm actually treated people like people, not case files.

Nine years later, that idea is still the whole point. It's shown up in over a hundred trials, in the therapist who sits in on first meetings, in the late nights and hard conversations, and in every client who walked in overwhelmed and walked out feeling like someone actually had their back.

None of that happens without the people who trusted us to handle some of the hardest moments of their lives. That trust is not something we take lightly, and it's the reason this team shows up the way it does, year after year.

Here's to nine years, and to everyone who made them mean something. Thank you.

A judge deciding your custody arrangement is what happens when parents can't reach one themselves, not the default path....
10/07/2026

A judge deciding your custody arrangement is what happens when parents can't reach one themselves, not the default path.

Missouri actually requires divorcing or separating parents to submit a parenting plan, and a strong one covers far more than just where the kids sleep on a given night. It spells out the custody and visitation schedule, including holidays, birthdays, and school breaks, along with who has legal custody to make decisions about education, healthcare, and other major issues in your child's life.

It also covers the details that prevent future arguments: transportation and exchange logistics, how school and medical information gets shared between households, how extracurricular costs get split, and a clear process for resolving disagreements when they come up. The more specific the plan, the fewer things there are left to fight about later.

Parents who can work through these details together, whether directly or through mediation, generally end up with an arrangement that fits their actual lives better than anything a judge could order from the bench. It also tends to be faster and less expensive than litigation.

At Marler Law Partners, we help parents build parenting plans that hold up, both legally and practically. If you're navigating this decision, we're here to help you create something that actually works for your family.

A divorce order isn't meant to be frozen in time. Life keeps moving, and Missouri family courts recognize that.If someth...
10/06/2026

A divorce order isn't meant to be frozen in time. Life keeps moving, and Missouri family courts recognize that.

If something significant happens that's genuinely outside your control, a job loss, a serious injury, a major shift in income, your child's needs changing as they get older, you have the right to petition the court for a modification. This applies to custody arrangements, child support, and alimony alike.

A few real examples: if you're paying alimony and get injured in a way that leaves you unable to work, that can be grounds to modify or end that obligation. If your ex is regularly violating a custody agreement or relocated with your child without telling you, that's grounds too, and possibly contempt proceedings on top of it. If your ex started cohabitating with a new partner and didn't disclose it, and your agreement says alimony ends under those circumstances, you may have a case for termination and even repayment.

What the court will not do is approve changes based on choices within your control. Quitting a job to avoid child support, for example, will not hold up. The change has to be real, and it has to be something that actually happened to you, not something you're engineering.

If your life looks different than it did when your order was finalized, it might be time to find out whether your order should look different too. At Marler Law Partners, we can help you figure out if you have grounds and walk you through what modification actually looks like.

Reach out if you have questions.

10/01/2026

Oh, hey! Meet the team behind Marlaw Law Partners. 👋

If you've ever felt like your lawyer didn't quite get why you were struggling to remember a date, or why you went quiet ...
09/30/2026

If you've ever felt like your lawyer didn't quite get why you were struggling to remember a date, or why you went quiet in a meeting you'd been dreading, there's a reason for that, and it isn't a character flaw.

When someone is under the kind of stress divorce and separation create, the brain's threat detection system takes over and the part responsible for rational thinking, planning, and clear communication quietly loses ground. That's not an exaggeration. It shows up as forgetting timelines, going blank mid conversation, struggling to focus on paperwork, or feeling both numb and overwhelmed within the same hour. None of that means someone is being difficult or isn't taking their case seriously. It means their nervous system is doing exactly what it's built to do under threat.

This matters in family law specifically because the process itself can trigger these same responses, on top of whatever brought someone to this point in the first place. A client who seems withdrawn, indecisive, or inconsistent isn't necessarily being uncooperative. They may be surviving.

What helps is fairly simple in practice: safety, transparency, real choices instead of decisions made under pressure, and treating clients as partners instead of people to be managed. Written summaries after meetings. Time to process before big decisions get locked in. Space to ask the same question twice without feeling like a burden.

At Marler Law Partners, this is the lens we try to bring to every case, because how we show up for clients affects more than the legal outcome. It affects how people come out the other side.

If you're looking for a firm that sees the whole picture, we'd like to talk with you.

The name "Collaborative Divorce" makes it sound like you need to already be getting along to be successful. You don't.Mo...
09/29/2026

The name "Collaborative Divorce" makes it sound like you need to already be getting along to be successful. You don't.

Most people picture divorce through movies, TV, or a friend's worst experience: courtroom fights, mudslinging, years of conflict. Collaborative divorce was built as an alternative to that, but it is not reserved for couples who are calm and agreeable from day one.

What it actually requires is a willingness to commit to the process itself. Both spouses have their own attorney. A financial professional and, a mental health professional are part of the team. Everyone is working toward the same goal: a resolution that supports both spouses and the kids, without going to court.

Anger, fear, or distrust showing up along the way does not mean the process is failing. Those feelings are normal in any divorce. What matters is whether both people are still willing to work through the process honestly instead of walking away from it.

If you are feeling more anger than peace right now but you know you don't want a courtroom battle, that does not rule out collaborative divorce. It might be exactly why it's worth considering.

At Marler Law Partners, we can help you figure out if this process fits your situation. If you have questions about how it works, we are here.

Visit marlerlawpartners.com to get started.

Address

10805 Sunset Office Drive, Suite 210
St. Louis, MO
63127

Opening Hours

Monday 8:30am - 4:30pm
Tuesday 8:30am - 4:30pm
Wednesday 8:30am - 4:30pm
Thursday 8:30am - 4:30pm
Friday 8:30am - 4:30pm

Telephone

+13149261944

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