Estate planning rules in Wyoming

Wills, intestacy and surviving spouses

Wyoming permits witnesses to appear through audio-video technology if they can see and hear the testator in real time and meet the statutory safeguards. Wyoming separately recognizes holographic wills.

Wyoming intestacy gives half-blood relatives the same inheritance share as whole-blood relatives.

Wyoming treats an adopted person as the adopting parent's child for inheritance. Wyoming adoption by a natural parent's spouse does not affect the child's relationship with that natural parent.

Wyoming counts a lifetime gift to an heir as an advancement if the decedent declared that treatment in a contemporaneous writing or the heir acknowledged it in writing.

Wyoming gives a surviving spouse of a Wyoming domiciliary an elective share of one-half if no issue survive or the spouse is a parent of any surviving issue. Wyoming sets the share at one-fourth otherwise.

Wyoming property of a decedent domiciled elsewhere is subject to the elective-share law of the decedent's domicile at death.

Trust administration

Wyoming trustees act impartially in investing, managing and distributing trust property when a trust has two or more beneficiaries.

Wyoming presumes a personal-versus-fiduciary conflict in a trustee transaction with the trustee's spouse, descendants, siblings, parents or the spouses of those relatives.

Wyoming provides reasonable trustee compensation when the trust does not set compensation. Wyoming's trust code permits a trustee of a revocable living trust to resign with court approval.

Wyoming gives a trust protector powers established by the trust instrument or a judicial order. Wyoming permits the protector to exercise those powers or refrain from exercising them in the trust's best interests.

Wyoming allocates 27.5% of more-than-nominal royalties, shut-in-well payments, take-or-pay payments, bonuses or delay rentals to principal and the balance to income.

Wyoming allocates timber net receipts to principal to the extent timber removed exceeds estimated growth or the receipts come from selling standing timber.

Fiduciary access to digital assets

Wyoming gives a changeable online-tool direction about disclosure priority over a conflicting direction in a will, trust, power of attorney or similar record.

Wyoming permits a custodian disclosing digital assets to grant a fiduciary or designated recipient full access or partial access sufficient for assigned tasks.

Wyoming applies ordinary fiduciary duties of care, loyalty and confidentiality to fiduciaries managing digital assets.

Guardianship and conservatorship

Wyoming gives a proposed ward the right to the least restrictive and most appropriate guardianship or conservatorship suited to the person's circumstances.

Wyoming appointment of a guardian or conservator does not itself determine that the ward lacks testamentary capacity.

Wyoming generally limits an adult temporary guardianship to 90 days, with an extension of up to 90 additional days or conversion to a regular proceeding.

Wyoming permits an adult to petition for a standby conservator whose appointment depends on a specified event or described mental or physical health condition, established as the petition directs.

Thresholds and rates change. Check the state's own current figures.

Common questions