Free Wyoming Non-Durable (General) Power of Attorney Form

Wyoming came to this statute late, and documents signed before it arrived are judged by something else entirely. A Wyoming Non-Durable (General) Power of Attorney gives an agent authority over your financial affairs and states expressly that the authority ends on your incapacity. The Uniform Power of Attorney Act sits at chapter 9 of Title 3 of the Wyoming Statutes and took effect on January 1, 2018.

Five things, and the execution bar is one of the lightest anywhere, which puts the weight on your drafting.

One Signature

Section 3-9-105 asks for your signature, or a signature made in your conscious presence by another person you direct to sign your name. That is the whole of the signing requirement. No witnesses are named, and no minimum age is set for the person who signs at your direction, so if someone is signing for you, choose an adult with no interest in the document even though Wyoming does not make you.

The Notary Buys a Presumption

The same section adds that a signature is presumed to be genuine where you acknowledge it before a notary public or other person authorized by law to take acknowledgments. That is a presumption rather than a condition of validity, which means an unnotarized Wyoming document can still be valid and will still be hard to use. Get it notarized anyway, because the people who decide whether to honor it are not reading the statute.

Saying It Ends at Incapacity

Section 3-9-104(a) provides that a power of attorney created on or after the effective date of the act is durable unless it expressly provides that it is terminated by the incapacity of the principal. Leave the point unaddressed and your agent keeps acting after you cannot.

Describe the Authority Narrowly

Because Wyoming asks so little at the signing table, the limits that matter are the ones inside the document. Name the subjects your agent may act on rather than granting everything you could do yourself, add an end date or a defined task, and name a successor so the arrangement does not simply lapse if your first choice steps back.

Documents From Elsewhere

Section 3-9-106 recognizes a power of attorney executed outside Wyoming if its execution complied with the law of the jurisdiction determining its meaning and effect, or with the requirements of section 19-11-202 or any requirements for a military power of attorney under federal law. That second route is a Wyoming addition, pointing at the state’s own military affairs provisions alongside the federal standard.

Because before 2018 Wyoming had no Uniform Power of Attorney Act at all. Section 3-9-104(b) handles that directly: a power of attorney existing on the effective date of the act is durable only if, on that day, it was durable in accordance with the law existing on the day it was executed.

That is a different problem from a statute being amended. A Wyoming document signed in, say, 2012 was not made under a shorter version of chapter 9. It was made under whatever general law applied before the chapter existed, and the Act does not retrofit its rules onto it.

The practical consequence runs in both directions. If you are holding an older Wyoming power of attorney, do not assume the current chapter tells you what it does. And if you are making a new Wyoming Non-Durable (General) Power of Attorney, do not build it from an older Wyoming precedent, because that precedent was drafted against a different background.

Wyoming does publish a fill-in statutory form at section 3-9-301, with an agent’s certification form at section 3-9-302. Both postdate January 2018, so a form carrying those citations is at least working from the current Act.

1. Name your agent and any successor, and describe the authority you are granting.
2. Write the express provision terminating the document on your incapacity, as section 3-9-104 requires.
3. Name the ending: a date on the calendar, or the errand that completes it.
4. Check that anything you are drafting from postdates January 1, 2018.
5. Sign the document, or direct another person in your conscious presence to sign your name.
6. Take it to a notary public, whose acknowledgment gives the signature its presumption.
7. Pass the acknowledged original to your agent and keep a dated copy of your own.

A complete Wyoming Non-Durable (General) Power of Attorney carries:

• Your name and address, and your agent’s
• Any successor agent
• The authority granted, itemized
• The express provision terminating it on your incapacity
• An end date or defined task
• Your signature and a notarial acknowledgment