How does a Wyoming landlord lawfully end a tenancy, and when may a tenant leave early?

Landlord: no statute states a notice period, and the common law fills the gap. Tenant: the statute states no tenant period.

There is no statutory count to anchor, because there is no statutory period. Where the lease sets a period, the lease's own words say how it is counted. Where the lease is silent, the common law measures the notice by the rental period itself: the notice runs for one full period and the tenancy ends at the end of a period, so a month's notice on a month-to-month tenancy, and a week's on a week-to-week tenancy.

Whether the termination date must fall on a rental-period boundary or a rent-due date differs between tenancy types or is not settled by the statute; the rule for each is stated above.

The statute says nothing about agreeing to a different period. No statute sets a period, so there is nothing for a lease to waive and a Wyoming lease may set any notice period it likes, including none. The only anti-waiver clause anywhere in Wyoming's landlord-tenant law belongs to the Safe Homes Act, which says its provisions may not be waived or modified in any lease or separate agreement. The residential article runs the other way: any duty or obligation in it may be assigned to a different party or modified by explicit written agreement signed by the parties.

Source of the period: no statute states any period; the common law governs.

What the common law supplies: The Wyoming Supreme Court has twice said there is no statute on the point and has stated what fills the gap. In 1934 the court held that, absent a statute or a contract to the contrary, notice is necessary to end a periodic tenancy; that Wyoming has no statute prescribing any notice to terminate tenancies; that the predecessor of the three-day pre-suit notice provides for a notice to quit only as a condition precedent to a forcible entry and detainer action and has no application to ending a tenancy; and that the length of a tenancy with no stated duration ordinarily follows the intervals at which rent must be paid, so most courts require a month's notice on a month-to-month tenancy and the authorities point to a week on a week-to-week one, while a tenancy at will needs no notice at all unless a contract or statute says otherwise. In 1945, in a case about a furnished apartment let to schoolteachers, the court held that a tenancy by sufferance may be ended by re-entry or any affirmative action by the landlord showing that he wants the tenant to give up the premises, and that a notice to quit is not necessary unless a statute requires one, which Wyoming has none.

No Wyoming statute sets a notice period for ending a periodic tenancy, in either direction, and none sets a period for the tenant either. The lease governs. Where the lease is silent the common law fills the gap, measuring the notice by the rental interval: a month for a month-to-month tenancy, a week for a week-to-week tenancy, and none for a tenancy at will or a tenancy at sufferance, which end on the landlord's affirmative act. The only statutory number anywhere near this question is three days, and it belongs to a different document: a party who wants to start a forcible entry and detainer action must first notify the other side to leave the premises, and that notice must be served at least three days before the action begins, by leaving a written copy with the defendant or at his usual place of abode or business if he cannot be found. That is a condition on starting the court case, not a period that ends a tenancy, and the Supreme Court said so on the same statutory text. Holding over after a term is itself a ground for that action. The state's own statutory list of the ways a tenancy ends — expiration of the rental period, mutual agreement, the owner's repair-cost termination, the renter's abandonment, and a court order — does not include notice-based termination of a periodic tenancy at all.

No: no statewide rule requires a reason, and no statute expressly authorizes local ordinances.

Local ordinances: no statute or decision addresses them. No Wyoming statute preempts or authorizes a local just-cause or termination ordinance. The word preempt does not appear in Title 1, Title 34 or Title 15, and Title 15, which governs cities and towns, gives municipalities no landlord-tenant power at all: it contains no mention of rent control, landlords, just cause or eviction. Wyoming does not even preempt local rent control, which sets it apart from most of its neighbors; the rent side of the question is covered on the rent-increase page.

No reason is required to end a tenancy or to let a term expire in Wyoming. The one restriction on a landlord's motive comes from the Safe Homes Act: a landlord may not end a tenancy based solely on a tenant's, an applicant's, or a household member's status as a victim of domestic abuse or sexual violence. That bar carries its own saving clause, which says it does not prohibit adverse housing decisions based on other lawful factors within the landlord's knowledge. Nothing else in Wyoming law conditions a termination on a ground, and the statutory rule abolishing implied tenancies removes the continuing tenancy that a ground requirement would have to attach to.

A statute abolishes implied renewal: the term ends, and no periodic tenancy arises by implication.

After the term, nothing converts: a holdover creates no new tenancy. Nothing converts. The statute says that on the expiration of a term created by a lease, written or oral, there is no implied renewal for any period of time whatever, either by the tenant holding over or by the landlord accepting compensation or rent during the holdover, and that the holding over together with the landlord's acceptance of rent creates only a tenancy at sufferance with the rights and duties of that tenancy. A second section adds that no other tenancy than one at sufferance may exist after the original lease ends unless the parties make one by express written contract. So accepting rent from a tenant who stays on does not create a month-to-month tenancy in Wyoming, however long it goes on.

A Wyoming lease ends by its own limitation and no notice is required from either side. A lease that has expired may be renewed only by an express contract in writing, signed by both parties, even where the original lease was oral. Wyoming has no statute requiring a landlord to remind a tenant before an automatic-renewal clause takes effect, and no statute requiring notice of non-renewal. Both governing sections date from the Territorial act approved December 1, 1875 and have been carried forward in practically identical words ever since, a history the Supreme Court recited in 1945.

A tenant who stays after the term is a tenant at sufferance, by statute, and that is the only landlord-tenant relation Wyoming law will imply. The Supreme Court has held that such a tenancy may be ended by re-entry or by any affirmative action of the landlord showing that he wants the tenant to give up the premises, and that no notice to quit is necessary because no statute requires one. Holding over is separately a ground for a possession action, which the three-day pre-suit notice precedes.

Damages: No statutory enhancement: the landlord recovers ordinary rent or use and occupancy.

Wyoming has no double-rent, holdover-rent or enhanced-damages statute. The landlord's recovery is the ordinary one: the deposit may be applied, and the renter stays liable for any damages beyond what the deposit covers, plus interest at ten percent a year on any unpaid amounts. The only treble-damages provision in Wyoming's landlord-tenant law runs against the owner, not the tenant: a person wrongfully removed under the 2025 unauthorized-occupant article recovers triple the fair market value of renting the dwelling for the period of the wrongful removal, plus actual costs, court costs and attorney fees.

What a consented holdover becomes: A consented holdover converts to nothing but a tenancy at sufferance; the statute forbids any implied renewal for any period whatever.

Unsettled: the appellate court has expressly left the question open.

Burden of proof: on the tenant.

No authority addresses a clause accelerating the remaining rent.

Whether a lease may waive the duty is not settled.

Whether a Wyoming landlord must try to re-rent after a tenant leaves early is an open question. No statute imposes the duty: Wyoming never adopted the uniform act that carries the usual clause, the residential article says nothing about mitigation, and the article instead preserves the owner's damages claim beyond the deposit with interest at ten percent a year. The one Supreme Court decision to reach the question, in 1981, arose from a sublease of commercial space. The landlord there admitted, at least for that case, that the duty applied, so the court recorded a concession rather than making a holding, and it expressly declined to decide whether an exception exists in this jurisdiction to the general rule it was applying. What the court did settle is the burden, and it is unusual: the party who commits the wrong bears the burden of proving matters asserted in mitigation or reduction of damages. To meet that burden the breaching party must do more than say the other side showed no attempt to mitigate; it must actually produce evidence that the claimant did not try, which may be shown circumstantially by proving the claimant could have mitigated easily had he tried. No Wyoming decision applies a mitigation duty to a home tenancy. Nothing in Wyoming law addresses a clause accelerating the remaining rent, and nothing bars a lease from waiving whatever duty may exist.

No statute addresses a fee a landlord may charge for ending a lease early; the general damages rules govern.

No Wyoming statute authorizes, caps, or bars a fee for ending a residential lease early, and the words early termination, liquidated and reletting appear nowhere in the residential articles. A Wyoming lease may therefore impose a fee of any size, subject only to ordinary contract law. Two nearby rules point the same way rather than the other. The residential article requires a rental agreement to state whether any portion of a deposit is nonrefundable, with separate written notice of that fact when the deposit is taken, which assumes such terms are lawful. And the article preserves the owner's claim for damages beyond the deposit with interest at ten percent a year. Any duty in the residential article may be modified by explicit written agreement, and the only anti-waiver clause in Wyoming landlord-tenant law belongs to the Safe Homes Act. The administrative rules cannot supply a cap either: nothing in these articles gives any agency rulemaking power over residential tenancies, and the Secretary of State's listing of every agency with rulemaking authority shows no housing, tenancy or consumer-protection agency holding a landlord-tenant portfolio.

Early-exit rights by ground: domestic violence and related grounds, a defense to rent rather than a right to leave; military service beyond the federal act, state orders or National Guard duty are covered and a deployment or transfer threshold below the federal act's; death of the tenant, no statute; and other statutory grounds.

Domestic violence and related grounds: no right to quit, but victim status is a defense or release when the landlord sues for rent.

Who qualifies: The tenant or a member of the tenant's household, by either of two routes. On the first, at the time the tenant vacated, the tenant or a household member was under a credible imminent threat of domestic abuse or sexual violence at the premises. On the second, the tenant or a household member was a victim of domestic abuse or sexual violence on premises owned or controlled by the landlord and the tenant vacated as a result. Domestic abuse takes its meaning from the state's protection-order law: physically abusing, threatening to abuse, attempting to cause or causing physical harm, or acts unreasonably restraining the personal liberty of a household member; placing a household member in reasonable fear of imminent physical harm; or causing a household member to engage involuntarily in sexual activity by force, threat or duress. Household member is defined broadly there and reaches spouses and former spouses, cohabitants and former cohabitants, parents and adult children, other adults sharing common living quarters, co-parents, and people in or formerly in a dating relationship. Sexual violence means any act of sexual assault, sexual abuse or stalking of an adult or minor, including nonconsensual sexual contact or intrusion as the criminal code defines those terms. Stalking is covered only through that definition, so a reader looking for the word stalking in the Safe Homes Act will not find it. Human trafficking is not covered.

Separate schemes: The two routes differ in what must be shown and when. The imminent-threat route needs a credible imminent threat at the premises at the moment of leaving and carries no recency limit. The past-victimization route needs abuse or violence that actually happened on premises the landlord owns or controls, requires the notice to state the date of the sexual violence and to confirm that the tenant gave the landlord the supporting evidence, and carries a 60-day look-back with an excuse for delay.

Documentation: Medical, court or police evidence of domestic abuse or sexual violence. It is an open three-category standard rather than a closed list of documents: no protection order is required, and no self-certification is authorized. On the past-victimization route the evidence must have been given to the landlord with the notice. Whether it is enough is decided by the court, on the balance of probabilities, and only after the landlord has sued. The notice and the documentation go to the landlord together.

Window: 60 days; the incident or documentation must fall within that window before the notice. On the past-victimization route the abuse or violence must have occurred not more than 60 days before the written notice was given to the landlord, or, where the tenant could not reasonably give notice within that time for reasons related to the abuse or violence — the statute names hospitalization and seeking shelter or counseling — then as soon afterwards as practicable. The imminent-threat route has no recency window at all, because the threat must be live when the tenant leaves.

Notice: 7 days; at least that many days must pass between the notice and leaving. Seven days' written notice to the landlord before vacating, stating that the reason for leaving is the threat or the abuse. Nothing ends when the seven days run out: the lease does not terminate, and the notice does not release the tenant from anything by itself. Giving it is a precondition of the defense the tenant may later raise if the landlord sues for rent.

Rent owed: If the court is satisfied on the balance of probabilities that the conditions are met, the tenant is not liable for rent for the period after vacating. Everything before that stands. The act is expressly no defense to a claim for rent covering the period before the tenant gave notice and left, and it is expressly no defense to a possession action for failure to pay that earlier rent. A Wyoming tenant who follows the statute exactly can still be evicted and can still have a possession judgment entered.

Cost to the tenant: Not addressed. The act removes liability for rent after the tenant leaves and says nothing about an early-termination fee, liquidated damages or the deposit, none of which appear anywhere in it.

Other tenants on the lease: the statute is silent on the other tenants.

Locks: Lock changes are not addressed.

Later screening: no protection against reporting or characterization; a narrower bar applies. Wyoming has no bar on reporting or characterizing a departure of this kind in a screening report, and nothing in the code bars refusing to rent or refusing to renew on victim status. What the act does carry is a narrower bar with a wide reach on one axis: a landlord may not end a tenancy based solely on the status of a tenant, an applicant, or a household member as a victim of domestic abuse or sexual violence. It reaches applicants as well as tenants, but it bars only ending a tenancy, and it says in terms that it does not prohibit adverse housing decisions based on other lawful factors within the landlord's knowledge.

The landlord's side: The act creates no rights for the landlord and imposes one bar, on ending a tenancy solely because of victim status. It preserves two things for the landlord in terms: a claim for rent covering the period before the tenant gave notice and left, and a possession action for that unpaid earlier rent. Its provisions may not be waived or modified in any lease or separate agreement.

Wyoming does not give a victim of domestic abuse or sexual violence a right to end the lease. What it gives is a defense, raised after the fact. A tenant who gives the landlord seven days' written notice before leaving, stating that the reason is a credible imminent threat of domestic abuse or sexual violence at the premises, or abuse or violence that happened on premises the landlord owns or controls and caused the tenant to leave, may defend a later action for rent by proving those facts on the balance of probabilities, together with medical, court or police evidence and, on the second route, a 60-day look-back that bends for hospitalization or a search for shelter or counseling. The lease does not end when the notice is given; the tenant leaves and waits to be sued. The defense covers only rent for the period after leaving, and it is no answer to a claim, or a possession action, for rent that fell due before the notice. The act says nothing about fees, the deposit, co-tenants, locks or confidentiality, and no Wyoming appellate decision has construed it. A landlord may not, however, end a tenancy solely because a tenant, applicant or household member is a victim. Separately, a court may grant a person protected by an order of protection sole possession of the residence for the order's term, or order the abuser to provide temporary suitable alternative housing; that is a court remedy against the abuser, not a right against the landlord.

Military service: State orders or National Guard duty are covered and a deployment or transfer threshold below the federal act's.

When the state rights attach: The rights attach to a member of the Wyoming National Guard ordered to active state service by the state or federal government for more than 30 consecutive days. Active state service is defined to include state active duty and duty under title 32 of the United States Code, but not service called or ordered into federal service under title 10, which the federal act already covers on its own terms.

Wyoming adopts the whole of the federal Servicemembers Civil Relief Act, including its lease-termination section, as state law for members of the Wyoming National Guard ordered to active state service for more than 30 consecutive days. Two things make that more than a restatement. The trigger is shorter than the federal deployment ground, which requires orders of 90 days or more, so a Guard member on a 31-day state call-out has protections the federal act alone would not give. And Wyoming adds enforcement the federal act does not supply in this posture: knowingly violating those protections is a misdemeanor punishable by a fine of up to $1,000; the protections may serve as the basis for an action or as a defense in the state's courts, which must give such proceedings scheduling preference; a court must award reasonable litigation expenses including reasonable attorney fees in any proceeding to enforce the article; and the article supersedes any local law, contract, agreement, policy or practice that reduces, limits or eliminates a right it provides, which reaches a lease. A separate section lets a service member ordered to duty for more than 30 days suspend, and for more than 180 days terminate or suspend, a list of service contracts covering telecommunications, internet, television, gym memberships, satellite radio and other services provided under a contract requiring periodic and ongoing payments, with no penalty, interest, fee, loss of deposit or other cost, and lets a spouse living with the member act under it. A residential lease is a conveyance rather than a service and the listed items track the federal act's service-contract provisions, so that section is not a second lease-termination route; its catch-all has never been construed by a Wyoming court.

Death of the tenant: No statute gives a right to end the lease on the tenant's death.

Other grounds: Wyoming's one distinctive termination ground belongs to the owner rather than the tenant, and it sits inside the residential article. Where a renter has given notice that the unit does not meet the habitability standard, the owner may refuse to correct the condition and end the rental agreement if the cost of repairs exceeds an amount that would be reasonable in light of the rent charged, the nature of the property, and the agreement. The owner must notify the renter in writing within a reasonable time after receiving the notice of non-compliance and must give the renter enough time to find substitute housing, which may be no less than 10 days and no more than 20 days from the date of the notice. Rent is prorated to the date the renter vacates and the balance is refunded along with any deposit due. There is no relocation payment. The tenant's side of the same sequence runs through the court: after the statutory notices, a court may declare the rental agreement terminated or order the owner to make reasonable repairs, and on termination the renter gets the balance of the rent and the deposit back within 30 days and must vacate no sooner than 10 days and no later than 20 days after the court's termination. Those habitability routes are covered on the habitability page. Wyoming has no early-termination ground for the death of a tenant, a move into a care facility, age, disability, or a job transfer.

No statute treats absence as ending the tenancy; the common law governs.

Wyoming names abandonment as one of the ways a tenancy ends — its statutory definition of termination lists the renter's abandonment of the leased premises before the rental period expires alongside expiry, mutual agreement, the owner's repair-cost termination and a court order — but no section says what abandonment is, sets an absence period, provides a notice of belief, or gives the tenant a window to answer. Wyoming has the label without the machinery, and what counts as abandonment is left to the common law. What the article does supply is a property rule, and it is the most owner-favorable in the country: any property remaining in the rental unit after the rental agreement terminates is presumed to be both valueless and abandoned. The owner may dispose immediately of anything reasonably believed hazardous, perishable or valueless, and must give a seven-day notice for valuable property, which counts as served on the date it is mailed by certified mail to an address the renter furnished in writing for that purpose, on personal service under the civil rules, or on publication in a local newspaper. What happens to property left behind is covered separately.

There is no delivery rule for a termination notice, because Wyoming has no statutory termination notice. Three other documents each have their own rule and should not be confused with one another. The pre-suit notice that must precede a forcible entry and detainer action is written and is served by leaving a copy with the defendant, or at the defendant's usual place of abode or business if the defendant cannot be found, at least three days before the action starts. The habitability notices under the residential article may be served by certified mail or in the manner that pre-suit notice provides, and the owner's repair-cost termination notice must be in writing and given within a reasonable time after the notice of non-compliance. The notice a tenant gives under the Safe Homes Act must be in writing and given seven days before vacating, and the act names no method for delivering it. The rules for serving the summons that starts a possession case are covered on the eviction page.

Electronic delivery: the termination statute is silent on it.

What the notice must contain: The pre-suit notice must be in writing and must notify the other party to leave the premises involved; nothing more is prescribed. The owner's repair-cost termination notice must be in writing and must give a vacate date between 10 and 20 days out. The tenant's Safe Homes notice must be in writing and must state that the reason for leaving is the threat or the abuse, and on the past-victimization route must also state the date of the sexual violence and confirm that the tenant gave the landlord the supporting evidence.

The landlord-tenant chapter cites no federal statute. The federal Servicemembers Civil Relief Act enters Wyoming law by adoption for National Guard members on active state service of more than 30 consecutive days, and the adopting article is expressly supplemental to federal law, does not diminish any more beneficial federal right, and overrides any contract term that would cut a right it provides. The federal Violence Against Women Act supplies no right to end a lease. No standing order of the Wyoming courts requires a landlord to plead compliance with the federal 30-day notice for covered dwellings.

The federal CARES Act 30-day notice to vacate for covered properties, as read in this state's courts: no state appellate decision construes it. No Wyoming appellate decision construes the CARES Act's 30-day notice for covered dwellings, and the requirement has not been written into Wyoming law. The federal provision applies of its own force at a covered property, and because Wyoming's own pre-suit notice is three days, the federal notice is by far the longer one there. (Appellate picture read as of September 4, 2026.)

Day v. Smith, 46 Wyo. 515, 30 P.2d 786 (Supreme Court of Wyoming, 1934; arose from a commercial lease; bears on ending a periodic tenancy): The court held that, absent a statute or a contract to the contrary, notice is necessary to end a periodic tenancy, and stated in terms that Wyoming has no statute prescribing any notice to terminate tenancies, the predecessor of the present three-day provision supplying a notice to quit only as a condition precedent to a forcible entry and detainer action. It also held that the term of a lease of unstated duration ordinarily follows the intervals at which rent must be paid, that most courts require a month's notice on a month-to-month tenancy and a week on a week-to-week one, and that no notice is required to end a tenancy at will unless a contract or statute says so. The premises were a restaurant business let by the day, so the lease was commercial; the statements about the absence of a Wyoming notice statute are general and were repeated in a residential case eleven years later.

Welch v. Rice, 61 Wyo. 511, 159 P.2d 502 (Supreme Court of Wyoming, 1945; residential lease; bears on ending a periodic tenancy): Construing what are now the sections abolishing implied tenancies and requiring a written contract to renew, the court held that a tenancy by sufferance may be ended by re-entry or by any affirmative action of the landlord indicating that he wants the tenant to give up the premises, and that a notice to quit is not necessary unless a statute requires one, which Wyoming does not have. The case concerned a three-room furnished apartment in Cheyenne let to schoolteachers at $50 a month, and it records that both sections come from the Territorial act approved December 1, 1875 and have been carried forward in practically identical words ever since.

Goodwin v. Upper Crust of Wyoming, Inc., 624 P.2d 1192 (Supreme Court of Wyoming, 1981; arose from a commercial lease; bears on the duty to re-let): The landlord sued for the rent remaining after the tenant vacated. The court recorded that the landlord had, obliquely and at least for the purposes of the case, admitted that a landlord must mitigate, so the duty was conceded rather than held, and it expressly declined to decide whether an exception exists in this jurisdiction to the general rule that the party who commits a wrong bears the burden of proving matters asserted in mitigation or reduction of damages. On that burden the court did hold: to meet it the breaching party must do more than say the other side failed to show any attempt to mitigate, and must produce evidence that the claimant did not try, which may be shown circumstantially. The lease was a commercial one, a sublease of space in a Laramie shopping complex.