Stable modification of relative curves

We generalize theorems of Deligne-Mumford and de Jong on semi-stable modifications of families of proper curves. The main result states that after a generically 'etale alteration of the base any (not necessarily proper) family of multipointed curves with semi-stable generic fiber admits a minimal semi-stable modification. The latter can also be characterized by the property that its geometric fibers have no certain exceptional components. The main step of our proof is uniformization of one-dimensional extensions of valued fields. Riemann-Zariski spaces are then used to obtain the result over any integral base.