Wyoming asset protection: the strongest LLC statute in the country, and where it stops

Wyoming has the strongest charging order statute in America. It protects single-member LLCs by name, bars foreclosure, and shuts the door on receivers, all in the text of the law. A bankruptcy trustee reached into a Wyoming LLC anyway, and the exclusive-remedy statute did not stop the sale.

That is the shape of Wyoming asset protection. The statutory wall is the best available in the United States. The holes are the ones every state has, because they open exactly where Wyoming law stops being the law that applies: inside a federal bankruptcy court, inside your home state’s courtroom, and on the day your own bookkeeping gives a creditor the opening.

The charging order is the only remedy, and the statute says so

Start with what a personal creditor gets when they come after your Wyoming LLC stake. The full mechanics live on the charging order protection page. Here is what Wyoming’s own statute adds.

Wyoming’s charging order is the creditor’s only remedy, and the statute names foreclosure and receivers as things a court may not order.

W.S. 17-29-503 gives a judgment creditor a charging order and nothing else. Subsection (g) calls it “the exclusive remedy,” names the sole member inside that sentence, and then lists what a court may not do: foreclosure on the interest, and “a court order for directions, accounts and inquiries.” That last phrase is the one most statutes leave out. It bars the receiver and the creditor accounting, the two tools weaker states hand out when a charging order collects nothing.

Set Wyoming next to California and the contrast is almost word for word. California’s statute lets a court issue the charging order, appoint a receiver, order foreclosure, and make every other order and inquiry the debtor could have made. Wyoming’s subsection (g) is close to a line-by-line negation of that list. Same tool, opposite policy, and the difference is the whole reason people form in Wyoming.

One quiet feature of the statute cuts the other way and is worth knowing. Under subsection (e), the other members can pay the creditor the full judgment and step into the charging order themselves. That is a tool your co-owners hold, not one that helps the debtor.

The single-member LLC is protected by name

Most states built charging order protection for LLCs with partners, then went quiet on the one-owner company. Florida’s supreme court read that silence the obvious way in the Olmstead case and handed a creditor an entire single-member LLC.

Wyoming closed the single-member question in the statute, so there is no silence for a court to read against you.

Wyoming did not wait for a court. The exclusive-remedy sentence in 17-29-503(g) applies to “any judgment debtor who may be the sole member.” A one-owner Wyoming LLC gets the same statutory protection as a ten-member one. This is the rare place where the single-member version of the form is not the weak version, and it is why the single-member LLC page points here as the exception rather than the rule.

Bankruptcy is federal, and the statute stops at that door

Now the first real hole. Everything above is state law, and a bankruptcy trustee does not run on state law.

A state statute, however strong, stops at the threshold of a federal bankruptcy court.

In Pettine v. Direct Biologics (Tenth Circuit bankruptcy panel, 2023), a member of a multi-member Wyoming LLC filed Chapter 7. The trustee used the federal strong-arm power to take a charging order under Wyoming law, then foreclosed and sold the charged interest at auction when the operating agreement blocked a direct sale. The exclusive-remedy statute did not stop it. Two details make the point sharper. The buyer got only the income stream, no vote and no control, because the company had other members to protect. And the case ran in a Colorado bankruptcy court, not a Wyoming one, because the debtor lived in Colorado. The strongest LLC statute in the country was applied by an out-of-state federal judge and could not shield the interest from sale.

For a one-owner Wyoming LLC the exposure is worse, and the governing case is older. In re Albright, decided in the same Tenth Circuit, put a single member’s entire interest, control included, into the bankruptcy estate, because with no other members there is no one for the charging order limit to protect. A single-member Wyoming LLC in bankruptcy sits under Albright’s logic. The statute’s single-member fix is state law, and it does not follow you into the federal courthouse.

Piercing the veil, and the tax election a court may not use against you

The second attack runs from the LLC’s creditor back toward you: ignore the company, collect from the owner. The full doctrine is on the piercing the veil page. Wyoming’s statute rewrites the odds.

In Wyoming, being a disregarded single-member LLC cannot be used to pierce you, because the statute forbids a court from counting it.

W.S. 17-29-304 limits a court to a closed list of piercing factors, and no single one except fraud is enough on its own: fraud, inadequate capitalization, failure to observe legally required formalities, and intermingling of assets to the point that owner and company are indistinguishable. Then subsection (d) forbids the court from counting “factors intrinsic to the character and operation” of an LLC, and it names them: electing disregarded or pass-through tax treatment, flexible operation including skipped formalities, a member exercising ownership and control, and the liability shield itself.

Read that seam slowly, because it is the kind of thing a CPA and a litigator would each miss from their own side. The statute takes a tax election, the choice to be a disregarded entity, and forbids a court from treating it as evidence for a creditor-law remedy. Delaware reaches the same posture only through a stray line in a Chancery opinion. Wyoming put it in black-letter statute.

There is a story behind that subsection. In GreenHunter Energy v. Western Ecosystems Technology (2014), the Wyoming Supreme Court pierced a single-member LLC and counted its disregarded-entity tax status and one-owner character among the reasons. The legislature amended 304 in 2016 to overrule exactly that move. So the rule and the reason it exists are one clean story: a court pierced on a bad factor, and the legislature took the factor away.

None of this makes piercing impossible. Fraud alone still pierces, and so does mixing money until the company and the owner are one account plus a second factor. The site’s standing point holds with more force in Wyoming than anywhere: clean money handling is nearly the whole game, and skipped meetings are not the risk you were sold.

The asset protection trust: strong, seasoned, and built before the trouble

Wyoming is one of the minority of states that lets you create an irrevocable trust, name yourself a discretionary beneficiary, and still shield the assets from your own future creditors. It is called a Qualified Spendthrift Trust, W.S. 4-10-510 through 4-10-523, and the trusts and LLCs page covers how the tool works in general.

A Wyoming asset protection trust guards against future creditors only, and only if it was funded long before the claim arose.

The Wyoming specifics are strong. After the 2021 amendments, a creditor must attack a transfer into the trust within two years, and to reach the assets must prove by clear and convincing evidence that the transfer was fraudulent. Two years puts Wyoming level with Nevada and South Dakota, not behind them, and the widely published four-year figure is out of date. The trust needs a Wyoming-resident or Wyoming-authorized trustee with real discretion over distributions.

Here is the feature that ties the trust to the rest of this site. Each transfer requires a sworn affidavit, and one of its required statements is that the settlor “has and shall maintain personal liability insurance of at least $1,000,000.” Wyoming conditions the asset protection on carrying insurance. The statute makes the site’s insurance-first position into law.

The honest limits are real. The protection reaches future creditors, not the one already circling. Wyoming’s exception creditors are narrow but not zero: a delinquent child support claim, a creditor who relied on trust property you listed on a credit application, and property you yourself received by a fraudulent transfer. Nevada and South Dakota carve out no exceptions at all, so a settlor with a support arrearage is more exposed in Wyoming than a seasoning chart alone would suggest. Federal bankruptcy reaches back ten years for self-settled transfers made to defeat creditors. And a court in your non-Wyoming home state may decline to apply Wyoming law to a judgment against its own resident. The tool is serious, and it is for wealth built and moved while the sky is clear.

Beyond the LLC: home equity, exemptions, and the married couple

The entity is one layer. Wyoming’s exemption statutes are another, and one of them jumped recently.

Wyoming shields $100,000 of home equity per owner, and a married couple doubles it to $200,000.

The homestead exemption is $100,000 under W.S. 1-20-101, effective July 1, 2023, up fivefold from the old $20,000. Joint owners who both occupy the home each claim their own, so a couple protects $200,000. Much of the internet still publishes the old $20,000 figure. The exemption covers an occupied primary residence, not an entity’s rental or a vacation home, and Wyoming is a federal-opt-out state, so its residents use these state exemptions and not the federal bankruptcy list.

Life insurance is broadly protected. W.S. 26-15-129 exempts the proceeds, cash surrender value, and dividends of a policy payable to someone other than the insured, with no dollar cap. The annuity exemption is the opposite: W.S. 26-15-132 caps annuity proceeds at $350 per month. Wyoming shields the whole life policy and almost none of the annuity, which is worth knowing before you decide where cash sits. Retirement accounts are broadly exempt, and the smaller personal-property exemptions cover a vehicle to $5,000 and tools of a trade to $4,000.

Wyoming also recognizes tenancy by the entireties for real estate. A creditor of one spouse alone cannot reach a home the couple holds that way, though a creditor of both can. Whether Wyoming extends that protection to personal property, including an LLC interest, is unsettled, so do not count on entireties to guard a jointly held membership interest.

For families building something to last, Wyoming lets a trust run up to a thousand years for interests other than real property. LLC interests can sit in a dynasty trust and pass down the generations without landing in any heir’s personally reachable hands.

The best statute, the emptiest library

One warning belongs on every Wyoming page, and it is the honest counterweight to all of the above.

Wyoming has the best statute text in the country and one of the emptiest case libraries, so more answers here are promises than proofs.

Wyoming’s Chancery Court, a business and trust court that decides without juries, opened in December 2021 and seated its first full-time judge in January 2025. It handled 15 cases in its first year, 30 in its second, and 47 new filings in 2024, with roughly 50 published decisions to its name across four-plus years. Delaware’s Court of Chancery publishes hundreds a year. So when this site calls Wyoming’s charging order statute the strongest in the country, hold both truths at once: the text is the best available, and the record of how Wyoming judges apply that text under pressure barely exists yet. A strong statute with almost no case law is a promise, not a track record. The courts page explains why that gap matters as much as the words on the page.

The bottom line

Wyoming’s charging order statute is the strongest in the country, it covers single-member LLCs by name, and it bars foreclosure and receivers in the text.

The statute stops at the federal courthouse. A bankruptcy trustee reached a Wyoming LLC in Pettine, and a single-member Wyoming LLC in bankruptcy sits under Albright.

Wyoming’s veil-piercing statute forbids a court from counting your tax election or your single-member status against you, which is protection Delaware only offers as dicta.

The Wyoming asset protection trust seasons in two years, level with Nevada and South Dakota, but only for future creditors and only when it carries the required insurance and was funded before the trouble.

Home equity is protected to $100,000 per owner, life insurance without limit, and annuities to a thin $350 per month.

The statute is the best in the nation and the case law is among the thinnest, so treat the untested provisions as strong promises rather than settled outcomes.

What this page does not cover

This page is about how creditors reach you in Wyoming. What Wyoming’s law lets your operating agreement do, including the default rules that bite when you stay silent, is on the governance page. Where the entity lives, series and DAO variants, privacy, and the cost of moving property are on the structure and cost page. Fees, forms, and deadlines are on the filing page.

Last verified July 2026.