Wyoming total-loss rules

The scope limit is the point and it is routinely dropped: the 75 percent limb applies only where NO insurance company is involved in the settlement. For an ordinary insured claim the operative trigger is the insurer's own declaration, so citing 75 percent against an insured total loss in Wyoming misstates the rule. Oregon and Florida work the same way. Where the percentage does apply, the denominator is named — a nationally recognized appraisal guide or a source the Department has approved — which makes it checkable.

Recorded as an absence after retrieving § 26-13-124 and finding no valuation method, comparables standard, tax rule or fee rule. Wyoming Department of Insurance rules were not searched section by section. The one useful hook is § 26-13-124(a)(xiv), the duty to explain the basis of a compromise offer.

The quoted provision, § 26-13-124(a)(vi), is the nearest Wyoming gets to a valuation constraint. With no comparables standard the argument rests on good faith and on the explanation duty, both of which carry the frequency qualifier — see “unfair claims practices law”.

No rule requires the valuation itself to be delivered: the duty is to explain the basis in the POLICY, not to hand over the valuation workings, and the frequency qualifier means a single unexplained offer is not itself a violation. Ask in writing and date the request — in a state with no valuation rule, the request and the response are what a complaint or a bad-faith claim would be built on.

The settlement provisions are silent, and the Wyoming Statutes and session laws were searched for a total-loss tax provision; the only matches were a 2004 bill on registration and plates when a vehicle is declared a total loss, and session-law indexes; nothing in Title 26 pairs a total loss with tax or fees. Because no state rule requires it, the audit argues the tax on the policy's own value standard, the way it does for Michigan, and labels it that way.

The settlement provisions are silent on fees, and the Wyoming Statutes and session laws were searched for a total-loss fee requirement; the only matches were a 2004 bill on registration and plates when a vehicle is declared a total loss, and session-law indexes; nothing in Title 26 pairs a total loss with tax or fees. Some policy forms include these fees as a matter of contract, which is a policy question rather than a state requirement.

§ 26-13-124 was retrieved and read and contains no appraisal machinery. Title 26 and the Department's rules were not retrieved section by section.

The absence of day counts is verified — § 26-13-124 was read specifically for numbers and contains none. Acknowledgement text, verbatim from (a)(ii): 'Failing to acknowledge and act reasonably promptly upon communications with respect to claims arising under insurance policies'. Whether the Department's rules supply day counts was not established.

Two limits worth knowing together. The frequency qualifier means a single mishandled claim is not a violation. And Wyoming is generally understood to afford NO private right of action under this section — conduct it proscribes is instead pleaded as evidence supporting a common-law bad faith claim. That understanding comes from secondary sources and is not verified here. The practical consequence either way is that a regulator complaint, which can see across claimants, carries proportionately more weight in Wyoming than a letter citing the statute.

TEN years on a written contract — the longest in the ledger alongside Illinois, Missouri, Kentucky, West Virginia and Rhode Island. A ten-year statutory period is exactly the situation where a shorter policy suit-limitation clause makes the most difference, so read the policy.

Read on the Department's own page. The list of what the Department will do names this dispute exactly: an offer lower than the policy indicates, and whether the insurer investigated the claim reasonably. Filing itself goes out to a third-party consumer portal, linked as “File a Complaint” from the Department's consumer page, so the stable page to start from is this one. Online filing or (800) 438-5768; 106 E 6th Ave, Cheyenne, WY 82002.

A standalone insurance regulator, named on its own consumer page. Note that § 31-2-107(a) gives the Department a role in the titling test as well: where no insurer is involved, retail cash value may be taken from a guide 'or other source approved by the department'.