Free Missouri Lead Paint Disclosure

A Missouri lead paint disclosure is the federally mandated form a landlord delivers to a prospective tenant before any lease of residential property built before 1978. It carries the fixed federal lead warning statement, states the lessor’s actual knowledge of lead-based paint and hazards, lists the records being handed over, documents the tenant’s receipt of the EPA pamphlet Protect Your Family From Lead in Your Home, captures any agent’s acknowledgment, and is signed and dated by every party. Authority is 42 U.S.C. 4852d (Section 1018 of Title X, the Residential Lead-Based Paint Hazard Reduction Act of 1992), implemented at 40 CFR Part 745 Subpart F (EPA) and 24 CFR Part 35 Subpart A (HUD). Missouri imposes no separate lead paint disclosure form — the pre-lease disclosure duty here is federal. What Missouri does add is its own Lead Abatement and Control Law (RSMo 701.300 to 701.338): a post-notification abatement duty, an anti-eviction protection, and a state license for anyone who inspects or abates lead. Deteriorated paint is also a condition question under Missouri’s Missouri habitability laws. Generate the form below, then read on for exactly what the rule requires.

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Missouri lead paint disclosure overview

The lead paint disclosure — often called the Section 1018 disclosure, after the 1992 statute that created it — is the formal federal notice a Missouri landlord delivers to a prospective tenant for any residential property built before 1978. It does four things in one document.

First, it puts the tenant on notice of potential lead exposure through the federally mandated lead warning statement, the fixed language at 40 CFR 745.113(b)(1) that must be attached to or included within the lease.

Second, it transmits the lessor’s actual knowledge of lead-based paint or hazards in the dwelling. The lessor picks one of exactly two positions: known lead-based paint or hazards are present, with a description of what is known; or the lessor has no knowledge of lead-based paint or hazards in the housing. There is no third box, and there is no “maybe”.

Third, it transmits any reports the lessor holds from prior inspections, risk assessments, or hazard-reduction work. The lessor either provides copies of all available records and lists them, or affirmatively states that no reports or records exist.

Fourth, it documents the tenant’s receipt of the disclosure and of the EPA pamphlet. The signed acknowledgment is the landlord’s primary defence in any later EPA or HUD inquiry or private civil action.

The disclosure is not optional and the duty is not waivable by agreement. A pre-1978 Missouri rental leased without one exposes the landlord to government civil penalties and to a tenant’s private action for triple damages plus fees. Compliance takes fifteen minutes; non-compliance is the most expensive paperwork failure in pre-1978 rental practice.

Missouri has no separate pre-lease lead paint disclosure form — but it is not a blank slate either, and this is where a Missouri page should earn its keep. The disclosure you deliver before a lease is the federal one: 42 U.S.C. 4852d, 40 CFR Part 745 Subpart F, and 24 CFR Part 35 Subpart A. Missouri does not layer a second disclosure form on top. What Missouri does have is a genuine lead statute doing different work — the Lead Abatement and Control Law at RSMo 701.300 to 701.338, administered by the Missouri Department of Health and Senior Services. Understanding what it does, and what it does not do, is the difference between an accurate Missouri answer and a copy of a federal one.

It is an abatement and licensing law, not a disclosure mandate. The distinction matters, because a lot of pages blur a lead-contractor certification regime into a landlord disclosure duty, and they are not the same thing. Here is what RSMo Chapter 701 actually requires of a Missouri landlord:

• A post-notification abatement duty — RSMo 701.308.1. When a resident, or a young child who regularly visits a child-occupied facility, is identified with an elevated blood lead level, the Department (or a licensed local health department) may inspect the dwelling under RSMo 701.304. If that inspection finds a lead hazard and the owner receives written notification, the owner must abate the hazard or establish interim controls within the applicable period — or remove the unit from the rental market. This is a real, enforceable duty; it is simply triggered by a blood-lead finding, not by signing a new tenant.
• An anti-eviction protection — RSMo 701.308.2. No tenant may be evicted because a resident has an elevated blood lead level or suspected lead poisoning, or because of any abatement action the chapter requires of the owner. The landlord may still evict for other lawful reasons, but not for the lead finding itself. This is a Missouri protection with no federal counterpart.
• A state license to inspect or abate — RSMo 701.316. No one may conduct lead-bearing-substance activities — inspection, risk assessment, or abatement — without completing a Department- or EPA-accredited training program and holding a Missouri license from the Department. Missouri stacks its own license on top of the federal certification, so the person who does covered lead work in Missouri needs both.
• Criminal penalties for violations — RSMo 701.320. Violating the core abatement and licensing sections (including 701.308 and 701.316) is a class A misdemeanor; performing licensed lead abatement while a license is suspended or revoked is a class E felony.

Missouri also runs a childhood lead-testing program at RSMo 701.340 to 701.349. The Department identifies high-risk geographic areas, every child under six is assessed annually by questionnaire, high-risk children are blood-tested with parental consent, and child-care facilities in high-risk areas must collect evidence of testing at enrollment. This is a public-health surveillance function rather than a landlord filing duty — but it is the engine that produces the elevated-blood-lead findings that can trigger the RSMo 701.308 abatement duty above, so it is worth a landlord’s awareness.

And local ordinances can go further. RSMo 701.324 and RSMo 701.348 both expressly preserve the power of any Missouri city or county to enact and enforce lead-poisoning-control ordinances that meet the same or higher standards than state law. St. Louis and Kansas City are the jurisdictions most often cited for local lead-safe or rental-testing programs, which can add inspection, registration, testing, or disclosure obligations beyond the federal rule. Those are municipal measures, not state law, and they change on their own timetable — confirm the current requirements with the city’s health department or code-enforcement office before assuming none applies.

Because the pre-lease disclosure obligation is federal rather than Missouri-specific, the same disclosure applies to a rental in any state — our federal lead-based paint disclosure form is the generic version of the Missouri form on this page.

Most guides list “three things” a landlord must do. The regulation is more precise than that. 40 CFR 745.113(b) requires six distinct elements in the lease or an attachment to it. A disclosure missing any one of them is defective, regardless of how professional the form looks. This is the checklist to audit your own paperwork against.

Note what is not in that list: no inspection window, no testing requirement, no filing with any agency, and no obligation to remediate. The federal rule is an information-transfer rule. It makes you tell the truth about what you know and hand over what you hold; it does not make you go looking. (Missouri’s separate abatement duty under RSMo 701.308 can make you remediate later, but that is a different trigger, covered above.)

“Target housing” is the federal term for property subject to the rule. The definition at 40 CFR 745.103 is residential dwellings constructed before 1 January 1978, subject to the narrow exclusions in the next section.

Why 1978 — and which 1978 date actually governs. The operative cutoff comes from the definition itself: 40 CFR 745.103 defines target housing as housing constructed prior to 1978, meaning construction before 1 January 1978. The historical reason that year was chosen is the Consumer Product Safety Commission’s ban on lead-containing paint at 16 CFR 1303.1 — but that ban applies to paint manufactured after 27 February 1978, which is not the same date. Competing pages routinely merge the two and report the CPSC ban as effective 1 January 1978. It was not. The distinction has no practical effect on your compliance answer, because the construction cutoff in 745.103 is what decides coverage, but it does tell you which cite to trust: for whether your unit is covered, read 745.103, not the CPSC rule. Housing constructed from 1 January 1978 onward sits outside the disclosure regime entirely.

How to verify the build year in Missouri. The county assessor’s record is the fastest authoritative source, and Missouri counties pu