Wyoming Judgment Collection: Five Clocks, Five Triggers
A Wyoming judgment lien starts the day the judgment is filed with the county clerk. Interest runs from rendition. Dormancy runs from the date of the judgment or the last execution. A revived lien runs from the motion. And the bar on reviving runs from the day the judgment went dormant. Five clocks, five starting events, one title of the Wyoming Statutes.
The Short Version
A Wyoming judgment binds the debtor's land in the county of entry from the day it is filed with the county clerk and is recorded in the real estate records; other counties need a transcript filed with both the clerk of district court and the county clerk, and the lien runs from the county clerk filing. If no execution issues within five years of the judgment, or five years pass between executions, the judgment is dormant and ceases to operate as a lien. It can be revived by motion or conditional order – but the revived lien operates only from the conditional order or the filing of the motion, so intervening encumbrances take priority. No action to revive may be brought more than ten years after dormancy, fifteen where a disability applied, or twenty-one in a child support proceeding.
Watch: Wyoming Judgment Collection: Dormancy, Liens and Revival
A short orientation, then the Wyoming sections that decide when a judgment goes quiet and what reviving it is worth.
Watch Overview
Five Wyoming Clocks, Five Different Starting Events
Every one of these is in Title 1 of the Wyoming Statutes, and no two of them are measured from the same thing.
| What is being measured | It runs from | Authority |
|---|---|---|
| The judgment lien on land in the county where judgment was entered | The day the judgment is filed with the county clerk | 1-17-302 |
| Post-judgment interest at ten percent per year | The date of rendition | 1-16-102(a) |
| Dormancy at five years | The date of the judgment, or the date the last execution issued | 1-17-307 |
| A revived judgment's lien | The entry of the conditional order or the filing of the motion – not the original judgment | 1-16-502 |
| The outer bar on bringing an action to revive | The day the judgment became dormant | 1-16-503(a) |
| The preference rule in the execution article | The judgment's rendition, with appeal, injunction, sheriff vacancy and officer inability excluded from the count | 1-17-336 |
Row four is the expensive one, and it is the reason Wyoming rewards early action more than most states. A revived Wyoming lien takes its date from the revival, so anything a bank, a contractor or a second creditor recorded during the dormant interval sits ahead of it. Row two matters for a different reason: at ten percent per year from rendition, a Wyoming judgment left alone for five years is worth half again what it was, which is usually the argument for spending money on locating the debtor rather than writing the file off. Where the judgment is founded on a contract and all parties agreed a rate, 1-16-102(b) makes the judgment carry the contract rate instead.
The Lien Lives in the County Clerk's Real Estate Records
Wyoming does not create the lien in the court file. It creates it in the land records – and reaching a second county takes two filings and one date.
Section 1-17-302 is two sentences and both are load-bearing. "The lands and tenements within the county in which judgment is entered are bound for the satisfaction thereof from the day the judgment is filed with the county clerk. Whenever a judgment is required to be filed with the county clerk, it shall be recorded in the real estate records." It then adds that goods and chattels are bound from the time they are seized in execution – so personal property is reached by the levy, not by the filing.
A judgment of the Wyoming Supreme Court works the same way with one difference of geography: under 1-17-303 it binds the debtor's lands within the county in which the suit originated, from the day the judgment is filed with the county clerk. The same section preserves a district court judgment's lien through an appeal – the lien "shall not be divested or vacated, but shall continue until the final determination of the action in the supreme court."
For any other county, section 1-17-304 requires the creditor to file a transcript of the district court's judgment record with the clerk of the district court and the county clerk in that county. Two offices. But the lien date is single: the judgment is a lien on all the debtor's real estate in any county in which the transcript is filed with both officers "from the date of filing with the county clerk." The clerk of the district court in the receiving county then enters the judgment on that court's judgment records as though it had been rendered there.
Federal judgments follow the same architecture under 1-17-305. Judgments and decrees entered in a United States district court or circuit court held within Wyoming are a lien against the debtor's lands situated within the county where the judgment or decree is entered, from the day the judgment is filed with the county clerk; a transcript of the judgment record may be filed with the clerk of any Wyoming district court and the county clerk in any counties where the debtor owns real estate; and the lien again runs from the date of filing with the county clerk. Wyoming places three different kinds of judgment on one mechanism, which is unusual, and our judgment lien guide by state sets out how differently its neighbours handle the same question.
A Circuit Court Judgment Has a Sequencing Condition
Section 1-17-306 attaches the lien to the county clerk filing – but only if the district court filing happened first, or the same day.
Wyoming's circuit courts handle a large share of the money judgments that end up in collection, and section 1-17-306 governs what happens to them. Where a circuit court judgment is not appealed or stayed, the prevailing party may file a transcript with the clerk of the district court and the county clerk of the county in which the judgment was rendered, certifying the amount paid on it if any. The clerk of court enters the case on the execution docket together with the amount of the judgment and the time of filing the transcript with the county clerk.
Then subsection (b), which is where files go wrong: "The judgment shall be a lien on the real estate of the judgment debtor within the county from the day the transcript is filed with the county clerk provided the transcript has also been filed previously or that same day with the clerk of district court." The condition is about order and timing, not about content. File with the county clerk on Tuesday and with the district court on Thursday, and the Tuesday date does not do what the creditor thinks it does.
Subsection (a) adds a ten-day interruption that a creditor should watch for: if within ten days after the judgment was rendered the debtor pays it or gives bond for stay of execution, that fact is certified immediately to the clerk of the district court and the county clerk, and a memorandum is entered on the docket. And the cost of the transcript, the filing, the recording and the docket entry is paid by the party who files and records it, and is not taxed to the other side.
Subsection (c) is the compensation for all that paperwork: execution may be issued on the judgment at any time after the transcript is filed, as if the judgment had been rendered in the district court. A circuit court judgment that has been transcripted properly is, for enforcement purposes, a district court judgment.
Five Years of Silence Makes a Wyoming Judgment Dormant
Section 1-17-307 is one sentence, and it contains two independent triggers.
"If execution on a judgment rendered in any court of record in this state or a transcript of which has been filed as provided in W.S. 1-17-306(a) is not issued within five (5) years from date of the judgment or if five (5) years intervene between the date the last execution issued on the judgment and the time of issuing another execution thereon, the judgment is dormant and ceases to operate as a lien on the estate of the judgment debtor."
Two triggers, both five years. The first catches a creditor who never started; the second catches a creditor who started and then stopped. And the consequence is stated as a fact rather than a remedy – the judgment is dormant, and it ceases to operate as a lien. Nothing is filed to make that happen and nothing warns anybody that it has.
The practical shape of a Wyoming file therefore looks like a series of five-year windows rather than one long deadline. What keeps it open is the issuance of execution, which means Wyoming rewards a creditor who knows where something is – because an execution issued into thin air still keeps the judgment alive but achieves nothing else, while an execution issued against a located asset does both. That is why the locating question and the dormancy question are the same question in Wyoming, and why finding a judgment debtor's bank account is often the step that decides whether a five-year window closes.
Section 1-17-402 gives the creditor the tool for that. At any time after entry of judgment the creditor may obtain discovery by interrogatories, depositions or otherwise from any person, including the debtor, under the Wyoming Rules of Civil Procedure – and subsection (b) is the part usually overlooked: a person served with notice of discovery under the section "shall hold for the benefit of the judgment creditor from the time of service all property, money and credits in his hands belonging to the judgment debtor or due to him." Service of post-judgment discovery is itself a freeze on whoever is served.
Revival Works. It Just Does Not Reach Backwards.
Section 1-16-502 revives the judgment and the lien – and dates the revived lien from the revival rather than from the judgment.
When a judgment becomes dormant – including a circuit court judgment whose transcript has been filed in the district court for execution – it may be revived by the court allowing a motion for revival, or by a conditional order that the action be revived. If the order of revival is made by consent of the parties, the action is revived. If it is not made by consent, the order is served on the adverse party. If sufficient cause is not shown to the contrary, the judgment stands revived for the amount the court finds due and unsatisfied.
Then the sentence that changes the value of the whole exercise: "The lien of the judgment for the amount due shall be revived and shall operate from the time of the entry of the conditional order or the filing of the motion." A revived Wyoming lien is a new lien with a new date. Every mortgage, mechanic's lien, tax lien and competing judgment that attached while the judgment slept sits in front of it. In priority terms the dormant years are not recovered; they are conceded.
The statute also anticipates the debtor being gone, which tells you how often that happens. Where either party to the dormant judgment, or their agent or attorney, makes an affidavit showing that the adverse party is a nonresident of the state and that the judgment remains unsatisfied in whole or in part, and stating the amount owing, service may be made by publication as in other cases. A revival can proceed against a debtor who cannot be found – but the affidavit has to say what the creditor knows about where they are, and a creditor who has never looked has nothing to swear to.
Death does not end the process either. Under 1-16-504, if either or both parties die after judgment and before satisfaction, their representatives may be made parties to the judgment in the same manner prescribed for the revival of actions in 1-16-502, and judgment may be rendered and execution awarded against the representatives of the deceased parties. Sections 1-16-505 and 1-16-506 do the same for partners and sureties. Our page on what happens when a judgment debtor dies covers how that plays out across states.
Three Outer Limits on Reviving, and Only One Is Twenty-One
Section 1-16-503 is short enough to quote in full, and it is currently being reported wrongly on the open web.
| Who is bringing the revival action | Deadline | Measured from |
|---|---|---|
| The ordinary case | Ten (10) years | After the judgment becomes dormant – not after it was entered |
| A party who was a minor or subject to any other legal disability at the time the judgment became dormant | Fifteen (15) years | After the disability has ceased |
| A party in a child support proceeding | Twenty-one (21) years | The section states the period without a separate trigger |
The distinction matters because the twenty-one-year figure is currently being served to searchers as though it were the general rule. It is not. Subsection (a) opens "No action shall be brought to revive a judgment after ten (10) years after it becomes dormant, unless the party entitled to bring the action was" – and then the two exceptions follow as (i) and (ii). Ten years is the rule; fifteen and twenty-one are the exceptions, and twenty-one belongs to child support alone. Note also that the ten years runs from dormancy, so an ordinary Wyoming judgment that goes quiet at year five can still be revived until year fifteen – a longer total life than the five-year dormancy rule suggests, and a shorter one than the twenty-one-year figure implies.
Where Wyoming Files Lose Their Place in the Queue
Six of them, and four are about a date rather than a right.
The transcript went to the county clerk before the district court
1-17-306(b) conditions the lien date on the district court filing having happened previously or that same day.
Only one office was filed in for another county
1-17-304 needs both the clerk of the district court and the county clerk; the lien runs from the county clerk filing.
Five years passed with no execution
1-17-307 makes the judgment dormant automatically and it ceases to operate as a lien. Nothing is served to announce it.
The revival was treated as restoring the old priority
1-16-502 operates the revived lien from the conditional order or the filing of the motion. Everything recorded in between now outranks it.
Twenty-one years was assumed to be the revival window
1-16-503(a) allows ten years after dormancy; twenty-one applies to a party in a child support proceeding.
The judgment was never filed with a county clerk at all
Then there is nothing in the real estate records, and 1-17-302 binds land only from the day of that filing.
How a Wyoming File Is Reconstructed
Executions first, because in Wyoming the execution history is the life-support record.
Pull the execution docket, not just the judgment
1-17-344 requires the clerk of the district court to enter the parties, the action number, the execution number, its date of issue, the amount, the costs, the date of the return and the return recorded in full. That docket is where dormancy is proved or disproved.
Fix the date of the judgment and the date of every execution
Both five-year triggers in 1-17-307 are computed from those dates.
Check the county clerk's real estate records
The lien lives there, not in the court file, and it runs from the day of filing.
Confirm both filings exist for every transcript county
Clerk of district court and county clerk, with the district court filing no later than the same day.
Establish whether the debtor is a Wyoming resident
1-16-502 allows service by publication on an affidavit of nonresidence, and that affidavit needs a factual basis.
Map current real property before deciding on revival
Because a revived lien dates from the revival, and its value depends entirely on what is still unencumbered.
Deliver documents, sources and dates
So counsel decides whether to execute, transcript or revive on evidence rather than on an assumption about which five-year window is open.
What We Supply on a Wyoming File, and What We Decline
Set out before the work starts rather than in a footnote afterwards.
Wyoming's revivor statute contains a locating question inside it: 1-16-502 lets service go by publication on an affidavit showing the adverse party is a nonresident of the state, which is a sworn statement about where a person is not. That is precisely the kind of question this firm answers, and precisely the kind that has to be answered from evidence rather than absence of evidence. Records research and skip tracing describe the work here. The practice of law forms no part of it, no Wyoming private investigator licence is held by anyone here, and this page asserts neither. On a Wyoming judgment we establish the execution history from the clerk of district court's docket, the county clerk filings in the real estate records, and the debtor's current property and residence picture.
Every engagement opens with the requester stating the lawful basis, and with us forming our own view of it. Enforcing a Wyoming judgment held in your own name meets it. Wanting to know where somebody has gone does not, and a case caption attached to that wish does not convert it into a purpose. We do not pretext: no false identity is used with a county clerk, a clerk of district court, a sheriff, an employer or a bank, and we do not misdescribe whose enquiry it is or why it is being made.
There is a class of Wyoming search we refuse before looking at anything. Someone hiding from a person who hurt them. Someone a Wyoming protection order was granted to shield. Someone whose location is withheld by a confidentiality scheme or a court's sealing order. No figure on a judgment moves that line and no amount of elapsed time erodes it – it sits outside the commercial question altogether, and it is put to a requester during intake rather than kept back.
The remaining boundary is statutory. This firm sits outside the Fair Credit Reporting Act: we are not a consumer reporting agency, and a Wyoming execution-history file is not a consumer report. It may not settle a tenancy, an appointment, a credit line or an insurance risk. Where a requester wants it for one of those, the honest answer is that an FCRA-regulated provider is what they need, and that is the answer they get. Everything on this page is general legal information about the Wyoming Statutes and is not legal advice – a Wyoming attorney is who applies it to a particular judgment. The Legislative Service Office publishes the whole of Title 1, including the dormancy and revivor sections this page is built on, at Title 1, Code of Civil Procedure. Where the debtor has left Wyoming, the skip tracing services overview sets out how the search widens.
Who Brings Us Wyoming Judgments
Creditors whose five-year window is closing, or has already closed.
Holders of quiet Wyoming judgments
Where no execution has issued for years and nobody has checked whether 1-17-307 has already made the judgment dormant.
Creditors'-rights counsel in Wyoming
Weighing a revival under 1-16-502 against the fact that the revived lien will date from the motion rather than the judgment.
Multi-county creditors
Whose transcripts have to reach both the clerk of district court and the county clerk in every county where the debtor owns land.
Circuit court judgment holders
Meeting the 1-17-306(b) sequencing condition, where the lien date depends on which office received the transcript first.
Assignees of Wyoming paper
Inheriting files whose execution docket – the only reliable dormancy record – has to be reconstructed from the court.
Support enforcement
Where 1-16-503(a)(ii) gives twenty-one years and the ordinary ten-year revival bar does not apply.
Wyoming rewards knowing where something is far more than most states, because an execution is what stops the five-year clock – and Arizona's judgment collection rules, which run on renewal affidavits rather than dormancy, show how differently the same problem can be framed a state away. If your Wyoming question is legal, a Wyoming attorney is the right first call. If it is factual, Wyoming asset exemptions for creditors sets out what an execution cannot reach, and Wyoming wage garnishment laws covers the payroll route.
Our Commitment
Wyoming's revivor statute asks a creditor to swear about where the debtor is not. We will not help anyone swear to something we have not evidenced, so our Wyoming reports separate what the record shows from what it merely suggests, and name the office and date behind each finding.
Frequently Asked Questions
When does a Wyoming judgment become dormant?
Under W.S. 1-17-307, if execution is not issued within five years from the date of the judgment, or if five years intervene between the date the last execution issued and the issuing of another, the judgment is dormant and ceases to operate as a lien on the estate of the judgment debtor.
How do I revive a dormant Wyoming judgment?
Under W.S. 1-16-502, by the court allowing a motion for revival or by a conditional order that the action be revived. If the order is made by consent the action is revived; otherwise the order is served on the adverse party, and if sufficient cause is not shown to the contrary the judgment stands revived for the amount found due.
Does a revived Wyoming judgment lien go back to the original date?
No. W.S. 1-16-502 provides that the revived lien ‘shall operate from the time of the entry of the conditional order or the filing of the motion’. Interests recorded during the dormant period therefore take priority over the revived lien.
How long do I have to revive a Wyoming judgment?
Ten years after it becomes dormant, under W.S. 1-16-503(a). Fifteen years after the disability ceases where the party entitled to bring the action was a minor or under another legal disability when the judgment became dormant, and twenty-one years for a party in a child support proceeding.
When does a Wyoming judgment lien attach to real estate?
From the day the judgment is filed with the county clerk, under W.S. 1-17-302, and the judgment must be recorded in the real estate records. Goods and chattels are bound only from the time they are seized in execution.
How do I get a Wyoming lien in another county?
Under W.S. 1-17-304, by filing a transcript of the district court’s judgment record with both the clerk of the district court and the county clerk in that county. The lien runs from the date of filing with the county clerk.
What is the condition on a circuit court judgment lien in Wyoming?
W.S. 1-17-306(b) makes the judgment a lien from the day the transcript is filed with the county clerk, provided the transcript has also been filed previously or that same day with the clerk of district court.
What interest does a Wyoming judgment carry?
Ten percent per year from the date of rendition until paid, under W.S. 1-16-102(a), unless the judgment is founded on a contract in which all parties agreed to a certain rate, in which case subsection (b) makes the judgment rate correspond to the contract.
Check a Wyoming Judgment's Clock
Send the case number, the county and any execution you know of. We will reconstruct the execution history, the county clerk filings and the current property picture, and tell you what is missing.
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