A lot of the people who call me about a divorce have two addresses. A house in the valley and a house somewhere else. A ranch here and a business in Texas. A ski-season lease and a "real" home in California. The first thing I need to know is not what they own or who did what. It is where they have been living, and for how long, because Wyoming decides whether it will hear the case on a single number.
The rule
The statute is short. "No divorce shall be granted unless one of the parties has resided in this state for sixty (60) days immediately preceding the time of filing the complaint, or the marriage was solemnized in this state and one of the parties has resided in this state from the time of the marriage until the filing of the complaint."
Two paths, then. Either one spouse has lived in Wyoming for the sixty days before the complaint is filed, or the couple married in Wyoming and one of them has lived here ever since. Only one spouse needs to qualify, and the statute adds that a married person who lives here when the complaint is filed "is a resident although his spouse may reside elsewhere." Your spouse's address in Denver or Newport Beach does not keep you out of a Wyoming court.
Sixty days is one of the shortest residency periods in the country. It is also counted "immediately preceding" the filing, which means the clock is the sixty days before the complaint, not sixty days at some point in the past. A person who moved here in June and files in September qualifies. A person who lived here for ten years, moved away, and came back three weeks ago does not, yet.
What residence means when you have two of them
The statute uses the word resided, and it does not define it. For someone with one home the question never comes up. For someone with two, it is a question of fact: where you actually live, not where you would prefer to be taxed. The evidence is ordinary. Where you sleep most nights, where your driver's license and voter registration are, where the mail comes, where the dog is, where your calendar says you were. A spouse who wants the case somewhere else will contest residency with exactly those facts, and a judge who is asked to find that a person "resided" in Wyoming for sixty days will look at the sixty days, not at the deed.
I say this plainly because people sometimes try to establish Wyoming residency for the divorce on paper, and the paper is not what the court reads.
Where the case is filed
Venue is "the district court of the county in which either party resides." If you live in Teton County, the case can be filed here whether or not your spouse does. If you live in Sublette County and your spouse lives in Teton County, either county will do, and there is sometimes a reason to prefer one. The Teton County District Court sits in temporary quarters on East Simpson Avenue while the Justice Center is built.
What Wyoming does not require
Wyoming is a no-fault state. The ground is "irreconcilable differences in the marital relationship," and there is nothing to prove beyond that one spouse says so. There is no separation period before filing and no waiting period after it beyond one: a decree "shall not be entered less than twenty (20) days from the date the complaint is filed." Twenty days from filing, not from service. The Judicial Branch's own page says most divorces take longer, and they do, but the floor is twenty days and an agreed case can finish close to it, often without a hearing, on an affidavit.
That combination, sixty days in and a decree possible three weeks after filing, is why people who live between two states sometimes want the case here. It is also why the spouse on the other end sometimes fights the residency question hard.
Serving a spouse who lives somewhere else
Filing here does not require your spouse to be here. The rules provide for personal service outside Wyoming, and for service by publication "when the defendant is a nonresident of the state, or the defendant's residence cannot be ascertained, or the defendant keeps concealed in order to avoid service of process." A spouse served in Wyoming has twenty days to answer; a spouse served out of state has thirty; a spouse served by publication has thirty days after the last publication. Service has to be accomplished within ninety days of filing or the court will dismiss the case without prejudice unless you show good cause, and the district courts' uniform rules say the same thing. The clock on the complaint starts running the day it is filed, and a nonresident spouse who is hard to find can consume most of it.
The children are a separate question
Sixty days gets you a divorce. It does not get you a custody order. Wyoming's jurisdiction over custody follows the child's home state, which in the ordinary case means the state where the child has lived with a parent for the six consecutive months before the case is filed. A parent who moved to Jackson in July with the children and files in September has a Wyoming divorce and, very likely, a custody case that belongs to the state the children left. The same is true in reverse: a Wyoming family whose children are still here keeps the custody case here even if one parent has gone to Idaho. I have written separately about which state decides custody and support when a family straddles a line; the point for this article is that the sixty-day rule and the six-month rule are different rules with different clocks, and a divorce filed on the first can stall on the second.
Property does not wait for the decree
One more reason the timing matters. Once a complaint is filed, if it "appears probable to the court that either party is about to do any act that would defeat or render less effective any order which the court might ultimately make concerning property," the court can enjoin it. Property moved to get ahead of the court can be pulled back by order. So the question of when to file, and where, is not only about qualifying. It is about when the court's reach over the marital estate begins.
This article is general information about Wyoming law, not advice about your case.
