Lawmakers favor working group to review Wyoming probate code; no immediate overhaul planned

Legislators and probate practitioners on Wednesday agreed the Wyoming probate code could benefit from a structured, measured review and recommended creating a working group to evaluate changes over the interim.

Stakeholders including estate attorneys and trust officers urged the Joint Judiciary Committee to appoint an ad hoc group that would examine probate provisions section by section, identify specific problems and propose targeted fixes instead of pursuing an immediate, full-scale adoption of the Uniform Probate Code.

Lance Harmon, an attorney in Cheyenne who practices probate and estate administration and serves on the estate planning, elder law and probate planning section for the Wyoming State Bar, said the section received broad feedback from about 99 attorneys on a listserv. “Could our probate code be improved? Absolutely,” Harmon said. He recommended a “measured approach” to avoid creating a patchwork of fixes.

Scott Meyer, a committee witness and member of the Uniform Laws Commission, said similar overhauls of LLC and trust statutes had taken multiple years and urged assembling practitioners, trust officers and judiciary representatives to work line by line. “I think Mister Harmon summarizes this pretty well,” Meyer said. “I think it works really well. There are some things that need to be probably done. But I do encourage the idea of having a working group.”

Committee members asked the practice group to reach out to relevant organizations and bring representatives to the committee’s next interim meeting in Casper to meet and roughly outline a plan. The committee discussed who should participate, whether the judicial branch would be willing to join and whether the group should be formally appointed or remain an informal ad hoc working group.

Members flagged ancillary-probate provisions — rules that affect probates opened in other jurisdictions when property is located in Wyoming — as a recurring point of confusion. Harmon noted that some summary-distribution provisions require disclosure if a probate is ongoing elsewhere and that practitioners often attach certified pleadings from the foreign jurisdiction when handling ancillary matters.

The committee did not direct LSO to draft immediate statutory changes to the probate code. Instead, members asked stakeholders to convene a working group, perform preliminary review work outside the legislature where feasible, and return recommendations to the committee in future interim meetings. Members emphasized a preference for “home-cooked” Wyoming solutions rather than simply adopting the Uniform Probate Code wholesale, though they did not rule out considering uniform provisions where appropriate.

The committee chair asked staff to invite the Wyoming Trust Association and other groups to the next meeting and to check whether the judicial branch would participate in the working group. The committee set no firm deadline for final recommendations but discussed a multi-year project timeline consistent with prior statute overhauls.