The goal of this paper is to prove that if certain ‘standard’ conjectures on motives over algebraically closed fields hold, then over any ‘reasonable’ scheme $S$ there exists a motivic$t$-structure for the category $\text{DM}_{c}(S)$ of relative Voevodsky’s motives (to be more precise, for the Beilinson motives described by Cisinski and Deglise). If $S$ is of finite type over a field, then the heart of this $t$-structure (the category of mixed motivic sheaves over $S$) is endowed with a weight filtration with semisimple factors. We also prove a certain ‘motivic decomposition theorem’ (assuming the conjectures mentioned) and characterize semisimple motivic sheaves over $S$ in terms of those over its residue fields. Our main tool is the theory of weight structures. We actually prove somewhat more than the existence of a weight filtration for mixed motivic sheaves: we prove that the motivic $t$-structure is transversal to the Chow weight structure for $\text{DM}_{c}(S)$ (that was introduced previously by Hébert and the author). We also deduce several properties of mixed motivic sheaves from this fact. Our reasoning relies on the degeneration of Chow weight spectral sequences for ‘perverse étale homology’ (which we prove unconditionally); this statement also yields the existence of the Chow weight filtration for such (co)homology that is strictly restricted by (‘motivic’) morphisms.