Rule 51.15.Disqualification of Family Court Commissioner.

Family court commissioners handle a large share of Missouri’s family-law dockets, and Rule 51.15 makes sure the same disqualification protections available for judges reach them too. It imports three rules wholesale: Rule 51.05’s peremptory change of judge, Rule 51.06’s procedure for combining a change of venue and change of judge request, and Rule 51.07’s automatic disqualification for interest, relationship, prior service as counsel, or recusal.

The rule includes one qualifier: these procedures apply to family court commissioners except as Rule 121 otherwise provides. That reservation lets Rule 121’s own family-court procedures control where they conflict with or add detail to the general change-of-judge framework.

The practical effect is that a party facing a family court commissioner has largely the same tools available against a circuit judge — a request for change without needing to show cause, and automatic removal when the commissioner has a true conflict — adjusted only where Rule 121 says otherwise.