Wyoming: legal help you can afford

There is no public defender for a divorce in Wyoming, or anywhere else — the right to a free lawyer is a criminal-case right, and a divorce is a civil case. What exists instead is on this page, with the link to each one. Start with the fee waiver and the question of whether your spouse can be made to pay your legal fees, because those two are the ones people never think to ask about.

See a different stateWyoming
AlabamaAlaskaArizonaArkansasCaliforniaColoradoConnecticutDelawareFloridaGeorgiaHawaiiIdahoIllinoisIndianaIowaKansasKentuckyLouisianaMaineMarylandMassachusettsMichiganMinnesotaMississippiMissouriMontanaNebraskaNevadaNew HampshireNew JerseyNew MexicoNew YorkNorth CarolinaNorth DakotaOhioOklahomaOregonPennsylvaniaRhode IslandSouth CarolinaSouth DakotaTennesseeTexasUtahVermontVirginiaWashingtonWest VirginiaWisconsinWyoming

The five things to try, in this order

Ordered by how much they are worth relative to how hard they are, not alphabetically.

  1. Ask about the filing fee waiver. In Wyoming it is called Fee Waiver request (part of Self-Help Forms Packet 10, Family Law). Form Packet 10 (Family Law self-help forms). Filer discloses income, assets, and expenses to ask the court to waive the filing fee; statutory divorce filing fee cited elsewhere as $160 (not independently confirmed against a primary court fee schedule).
  2. Check the statewide legal-aid portal. Wyoming Judicial Branch – Equal Justice Wyoming lists the program that covers your county and what it takes.
  3. Use the court self-help service. Wyoming Judicial Branch Self-Help Forms. Self-help packets to assist people representing themselves in court matters, most useful for those who agree on the terms of their divorce. Packet 10 in the Family Law forms is used to request a fee waiver.
  4. Try the bar referral service. Wyoming State Bar Modest Means Program (MMP) and Lawyer Referral Directory. MMP is a reduced-fee referral program for low/moderate-income people ineligible for legal aid: participating attorneys agree to charge no more than $75/hour and no more than a $500 retainer (one source: up to $1,000 retainer for participating attorneys’ own terms). Phone (307) 432-2107 (MMP) or via the Bar’s Lawyer Referral Directory.

Legal aid in Wyoming

Legal aid organizations are funded to serve people under an income threshold, and family cases are one of the areas they most often take. Being turned down by one is not the end of it — the threshold, the caseload and the priorities differ by program and by month.

OrganizationWho it coversNotes
Legal Aid of Wyomingstatewide (offices in Casper, Cheyenne, Lander, and others)Free civil legal help to low-income individuals, including divorce; apply online or call the Hotline 1-877-432-9955, Mon-Fri 9am-4pm.
A law school clinic here takes family cases

University of Wyoming College of Law – Family and Child Legal Advocacy Clinic. Clinics are free, supervised by faculty, and the students have far more time for your case than a stretched legal aid lawyer does. They take few cases and they follow the academic year, so the answer depends heavily on when you ask.

Worth knowing about Wyoming

  • Could not confirm the exact current Wyoming statute citation for attorney fee awards in divorce; flagged rather than guessed.
  • University of Wyoming is the state’s only law school; its Family and Child Legal Advocacy Clinic explicitly handles divorce, which is a strong, directly confirmed resource.
The option almost nobody is told about

Limited scope representation. You hire a lawyer for one piece — one hearing, one document, a review of an agreement before you sign it — and do the rest yourself. It costs a fraction of full representation and it puts a lawyer in the two or three moments that actually change the outcome. How it works, and where it is permitted.

What we could not confirm for this state

Listed rather than filled in. Every one of these is something we went looking for and could not stand behind.

  • the exact attorney-fee statute, which we would not guess at

If you know one of these and we have it wrong or missing, tell us and we will check it and credit the correction.

Compiled 31 August 2026 from each organization’s own site, the state courts and the state bar. Legal aid funding and eligibility change, sometimes mid-year. Always check the link before relying on anything here. Corrections welcome.

Keep reading

Sources last checked2 September 2026
Page published2 September 2026
What this means. This is when the sources on this page were last read against their originals — statutes, court rules, official schedules — taken from the date this page was built from its sources. It is not the date the page was last edited. Adding a link or fixing a typo does not move it; re-reading the statute does. Law changes without notice, so treat anything time-sensitive as needing a fresh check. Where we get something wrong we publish it at thecusp.app/corrections with the date, what changed, and how long the error was live.