Will requirements in Wyoming

Who can make a will in Wyoming

Wyoming asks two things of anyone making a will: that you have reached legal age, eighteen, and that you are of sound mind when you sign it. Sound mind is a practical standard rather than a medical one. It means you understand what you own, who your family is, and what your will actually does with the two.

Signing your will in Wyoming

1. 1You sign

   You sign your will, or direct someone else to sign it for you while you are present.

2. 2Two witnesses sign

   Two competent witnesses watch you sign, or hear you acknowledge that the signature is yours, then add their own signatures. Choose adults who inherit nothing under the will: a witness who is also a beneficiary can still witness it, but that gift stays protected only if two other, disinterested witnesses signed as well.

3. 3The affidavit

   Optional but common: the self-proving affidavit. You and your witnesses swear to it before a notary, and a Wyoming court can then accept the will without calling either witness in to testify about the signing.

Wyoming also lets a witness appear by real-time audio and video technology instead of standing in the room, as long as they can see and hear you sign, judge whether you are competent, and confirm you are signing freely and voluntarily, then add their signature electronically under that same provision.

Handwritten and electronic wills

Wyoming recognizes holographic wills: one written entirely in your own handwriting and signed by your own hand. Wyoming is unusually generous about the form. Unlike most states that allow a handwritten will at all, Wyoming does not ask for even one witness to make it valid; the handwriting itself, examined later at probate, does the work witnesses do everywhere else. That also makes it the form most likely to cause trouble, since nothing checked your wording while you wrote it. Wyoming has not authorized electronic wills; the document a Wyoming court probates is paper, whether typed and witnessed or entirely in your own hand. That is exactly how Myend’s Last Will works everywhere: you build the will online, then print and sign it with your witnesses, on paper, the form every state accepts.

Property and your spouse

Wyoming is a common-law property state: what is titled in your own name is generally yours to leave as you choose. A will cannot use that freedom to leave a spouse with nothing, though. Wyoming lets a surviving spouse claim an elective share instead of what the will provides, and the size of that share turns on a narrower question than simply whether you had children. If you leave no surviving descendants, or if your spouse is also a parent of the descendants who do survive you, the share is one half of the property your will controls, after funeral costs, allowances, and enforceable debts. If your surviving descendants are not your spouse’s own children, most often because they come from an earlier relationship, the share drops to one quarter. Nothing about the election happens on its own; your spouse has to actively claim it after you die, but the right stands no matter what your will says (Wyo. Stat. Ann. § 2-5-101).

Your executor

Wyoming calls the person who carries out your will the executor. You can name almost any capable adult. If that person does not live in Wyoming, the court requires them to designate a Wyoming resident, bank, or trust company as an agent to accept legal papers on their behalf, and if a nonresident executor never makes that designation, the court can revoke their authority to act. A separate rule in the same statute sets a lighter bond when the executor is also the will’s only beneficiary; that is a different question from the agent requirement, so do not assume one settles the other. Many people solve the agent requirement simply by naming someone in Wyoming as executor and an out-of-state loved one as backup. New to the role? Start with what an executor actually does.

If someone challenges the will

Wyoming has no statute governing no-contest clauses. The rule comes entirely from its courts. In Dainton v. Watson, the Wyoming Supreme Court enforced a forfeiture clause against a beneficiary who lost a will challenge, without asking whether the challenge had been reasonable. In EGW v. First Federal Savings Bank of Sheridan, the court had the chance to soften that rule by adopting the probable-cause exception the Uniform Probate Code offers in many other states, the one that forgives an honest, reasonable, losing challenge, and it declined again. In Wyoming, a losing challenge generally costs the challenger their gift, whatever their reasons for bringing it. Write a clause like this with real care, and know that a family member who genuinely suspects something is wrong may hesitate before ever raising it.

If you do not make a will

Die without a will in Wyoming and the state decides in your place. Its intestacy statute hands your estate to relatives in a fixed order built for an average family, not for yours in particular: an unmarried partner, a stepchild you never formally adopted, or a friend who mattered more than any relative has no place in that order at all. A will, even a short one, is how you put the people who actually mattered to you back into the picture. See what happens if you die without a will.

What is different about Wyoming

Wyoming’s courts decided, twice, that losing a will contest costs you your gift, with no exception for honest doubt.

Every state has a story behind its no-contest rule, but Wyoming’s has stayed a matter for judges rather than lawmakers longer than most. In 1983, the Wyoming Supreme Court enforced a forfeiture clause in Dainton v. Watson without asking whether the losing challenger had acted reasonably. In 2018, EGW v. First Federal Savings Bank of Sheridan gave the court an opportunity to adopt the softer rule the Uniform Probate Code offers in many other states, the one that forgives a challenge brought in good faith with probable cause, and the court declined again. No legislature has stepped in to soften either ruling since.

The same preference for a plain rule over a complicated one shows up in how Wyoming protects a surviving spouse. It is not simply a matter of whether children exist, the way many states frame their spousal share. Wyoming asks a narrower question: is the surviving spouse also a parent of the descendants who survive? If yes, or if there are no surviving descendants at all, the protected share is half. If the descendants trace to somewhere else, most often an earlier relationship, the share drops to a quarter. It is a rule shaped around the actual family left behind, not a simple headcount.

Common questions

Sources and review