Which place’s debt rules apply—and who can help?

SettleADebt — S_WY PASS-03

Wyoming funds, custody, accounts, remittance, and return

Actual fresh source-access date: October 27, 2026, Pacific. Historical baseline: October 22, 2026—not a current-verification date.

Evidence boundary: This report does not adopt P02’s conclusions. The authorities supporting the findings below were freshly inspected for this pass. The reviewed P01 remainder is reproduced in the contribution crosswalk; no external save, import, queue, hash, or review status is certified here.

Component status: Substantive funds-control findings are established at the stated source scope. Important holds remain on the separate Rule 1.15 amendment order, official money-transmitter rule/adoption verification, actual account structures, insurance, insolvency priorities, and comprehensive later case history. This is not completion or acceptance of the Wyoming parent dossier or A066.

In the text, S001 abbreviates S_WY-P3-S001, and C001 abbreviates S_WY-P3-C001. The registers below contain the stable identifiers.

Principal findings

Account structure does not cure prohibited debt adjusting. Wyoming Chapter 14 reaches both fee-based adjustment of debts and receipt/distribution of debtor funds. A consumer-owned account, lawyer trust account, nonprofit designation, or licensed processor does not independently establish a lawful underlying debt-adjustment business. C001–C005. Wyoming Legislature+1

Wyoming does not supply one universal debt-relief trust-account regime. The complete Chapter 14 text contains no special account-title, deposit, reconciliation, remittance, or refund schedule. Potentially applicable duties instead arise from the actor’s actual status and conduct: professional rules, money-transmission law, an actual trust or agency relationship, the conditional federal TSR dedicated-account provision, and payment-system law. C004, C006–C019, C020–C057. Wyoming Legislature+2

A negotiated debt-management service and a standalone bill-payment administrator can receive different money-transmission treatment. FinCEN’s published rulings distinguish transmission integral to a genuine negotiated DMP from accepting customer funds simply to pay bills. An administrator does not inherit the counselor’s exclusion merely by serving its customers. C009–C013. FinCEN.gov+2

The current Wyoming lawyer rule requires separate accounting, not merely a bank account labeled “trust.” The version effective September 21, 2026 requires client-specific ledgers, at least quarterly written reconciliation, preservation of disputed funds, prompt delivery of undisputed entitlements, and five-year retention measured from termination of representation. C020–C035. Wyoming Courts+2

The TSR’s seven-business-day provision concerns actual receipt of the remaining account funds after withdrawal from the service. It is not merely a right to request a withdrawal, an instruction to initiate an ACH transfer, or a universal bank-account-closing deadline. Its exception is limited to debt-relief fees earned consistently with all applicable elements of §310.4(a)(5)(i)(A)–(C). C039–C043. eCFR

A. Numbered substantive findings

1. Actor, activity, purpose, nexus, and funds flow

The analysis begins with two separate questions:

First: Is the underlying debt-adjustment activity lawful for this actor? Second: Who actually receives, possesses, controls, transmits, or owes the money?

Those questions cannot be collapsed. Chapter 14’s exclusion of an actual tax-exempt nonprofit consumer credit counseling service or a qualifying attorney/legal-practice situation does not expressly grant a separate money-transmitter exemption. Conversely, money-transmitter authority does not authorize a Chapter 14-prohibited business. C001–C008. Wyoming Legislature+1

Branch matrix

Claims: C001–C019, C039–C057, C064–C072. Wyoming Legislature+3

Consumer purpose and remote providers

Chapter 14 itself contains no explicit personal/family/household limitation or detailed remote-provider nexus rule. That text does not justify treating business debt, creditor-funded services, indirect charges, or remote operations as categorically outside the prohibition. Those boundaries remain held.

The Money Transmitters Act is more explicit: §40-22-103(b) addresses persons offering, advertising, or providing money-transmission services to Wyoming residents for personal, family, or household purposes, including through the internet or another electronic medium. Its general licensing provision and definitions must also be examined for other activity; the consumer provision is not a verified blanket exemption for business-purpose transmission. C005–C008, C069. Wyoming Legislature+1

2. Ownership, title, segregation, control, institution, and interest

2.1 No special Chapter 14 trust regime

Fresh reading of §§33-14-101 through -103 established no special debt-adjuster trust-account statute. It does not establish that an excluded counselor may commingle money, use it for operations, disregard an agency obligation, or hold it without accounting. Those questions require another applicable source and the actual legal relationship. C004. Wyoming Legislature

2.2 Lawyer-held money

For funds possessed in connection with representation, current Rule 1.15 requires separation from the lawyer’s property and placement in an IOLTA or non-IOLTA account as appropriate. IOLTA is for funds that cannot produce net income for the client or third party beyond the costs of obtaining that income; other funds belong in a non-IOLTA arrangement. The classification requires attention to amount, expected duration, rates, costs and administrative capability. C021–C024. Wyoming Courts+1

The rule also supplies operational controls:

C025–C028, C032, C065, C067. These conditions do not prove that a particular account is insured to a particular amount or that its records qualify for pass-through coverage. Wyoming Courts+2

2.3 Consumer-owned dedicated settlement accounts

Where the TSR applies, the required-account exception has all of the following conditions: an account at an insured financial institution; consumer ownership and entitlement to accrued interest; an administrator not owned, controlled by, or affiliated with the debt-relief service; no referral compensation between the administrator and the service; and the specified withdrawal-and-return right. C039–C041. eCFR

A lawyer’s IOLTA account is not automatically interchangeable with that structure. The professional rule’s title, administration and interest arrangements must be assessed separately against the TSR’s consumer-ownership, interest and administrator-independence conditions. Nor does a nonbank administrator become an insured bank because it places funds at one. C024–C027, C040, C046. Wyoming Courts+2

2.4 Money-transmitter assets are not automatically individual consumer deposit accounts

Section 40-22-107 requires qualifying permissible investments against outstanding payment instruments, subject to its express commissioner-waiver condition. Subsection (b) provides a bankruptcy-triggered statutory trust for those investments, even if commingled.

That is not the same thing as a requirement that every customer have a separately titled bank account. It also is not a completed determination of tracing, bankruptcy priority, recovery amount, or insurance. C017–C018, C046, C074. Wyoming Legislature+1

3. Deposit, remittance, clearing, posting, accounting, and access

3.1 No universal remittance deadline established

Within the complete Chapter 14 and the selected money-transmitter provisions examined, no universal “deposit within X days” or “credit every creditor within X days” rule for every excluded counselor was established.

The actual requirements found are different:

C015–C016, C030–C032, C041, C053, C062. Wyoming Legislature+3

3.2 “Remitted” does not necessarily mean “credited to the creditor”

Wyoming’s money-transmitter definition of “remit” concerns payment to the licensee or its representative, or deposit into the institution account specified by the licensee. A delegate’s compliance with that duty does not by itself prove final receipt or correct posting by the consumer’s creditor. C015. Wyoming Legislature+1

Similarly, a payment instruction, a provider ledger entry, a bank’s available balance, a settled bank item and a creditor’s account credit are different events. Wyoming UCC §§34.1-3-310, -4-214 and -4-215 establish relevant distinctions for checks and bank collection: an uncertified check ordinarily suspends the underlying obligation until the stated payment/certification or dishonor event, and provisional bank credit may be charged back before final settlement. These provisions are not a universal ACH or wire-transfer timetable. C058–C060. Wyoming Legislature+2

3.3 Consumer access and error handling

A covered consumer deposit account may carry Regulation E statement, authorization and error-resolution rights. A bona fide trust account is excluded from Regulation E’s account definition; that conclusion depends on the actual legal arrangement, not the word “trust” in the account name. C047. Consumer Financial Protection Bureau

Recurring debits require the consumer’s signed or similarly authenticated authorization and a copy. Timely stop-payment and revocation procedures concern the bank debit; they do not automatically terminate the provider service or reverse a creditor payment. C048–C049, C063. Consumer Financial Protection Bureau

For a qualifying error notice, Regulation E ordinarily uses a ten-business-day investigation period, with a conditional longer investigation and provisional-credit process. The rule contains important exceptions and extensions, including certain new-account, point-of-sale and foreign-transfer circumstances. It is not a substitute for the TSR’s seven-business-day return requirement. C050. Consumer Financial Protection Bureau+1

4. Return triggers: cancellation, failure, dispute, death, and erroneous payment

The amount to return must be determined from actual ownership and the current reconciled balance, not from total historical contributions alone.

The relevant distinctions are:

• Money already validly paid to a creditor is not still in the administrator’s account.
• An already-withdrawn earned fee cannot be deducted a second time.
• A proposed fee is not an earned fee merely because it was invoiced or a creditor received some payment.
• Returned or failed transfers must be reconciled to the correct consumer ledger.
• Disputed money may require preservation while the undisputed portion is distributed.
• Revocation of a debit authorization is not, by itself, recovery of previous transfers.

These are accounting applications of the separate entitlement, return, dispute and payment rules—not an independent universal Wyoming refund statute. C029–C035, C041–C042, C049–C060, C063–C065. Wyoming Courts+3

Failure and death require identifying the proper actor

For lawyers, Rule 1.16 requires return of unearned advances upon termination, while Rule 1.15 governs disputed funds and entitled recipients. A disciplinary suspension order served on the financial institution can separately enjoin disbursements except by court order. A general “prompt return” duty cannot be treated as authority to ignore that injunction. C031, C035–C036. Wyoming Courts+1

Current disciplinary Rule 26(d) provides for protective appointment of counsel when its incapacity, disappearance, death, suspension/disbarment and lack-of-responsible-party conditions are met. The appointment is made by a district judge on Bar Counsel’s request. It is not automatic authority for an unrelated administrator or employee to empty the trust account. C037. Wyoming Courts

For a POA, death of the principal terminates the power, subject to the statute’s protections for certain actions without actual knowledge of termination. That termination does not transfer beneficial ownership to the agent. The proper estate or successor recipient still must be established. C054. Wyoming Legislature+1

For an actual express trust, §4-10-817 requires expeditious distribution upon termination, subject to its reasonable-reserve provision. That is not a free-standing right to withhold a reserve contrary to another applicable rule or the trust’s governing terms. C055–C057. Wyoming Legislature+1

Administrator insolvency, bank failure, tracing, priority and insurance payout are not resolved by these return provisions. Those remain in the separate financial-assurance/insolvency pass.

5. Lawyer and nonprofit branches

5.1 Current professional-rule version

The official compilation contains both an older Rule 1.15 and the replacement expressly labeled effective September 21, 2026. This pass used the latter body. Its printed history attributes the amendment to July 21, 2026, but the separate amendment order was not recovered. The operative compilation was read; the separate-order requirement remains a source hold. C020. Wyoming Courts+1

The separate Rule 10 order dated November 25, 2025 and effective January 26, 2026 was freshly inspected for its date, operative status and relevant business-form provision. It does not itself establish Chapter 14 exclusion or permission to receive money under a particular engagement. C071. Wyoming Courts+1

5.2 Disputed entitlement is not unilateral offset authority

Rule 1.15(f) requires preservation of the disputed portion, including a dispute involving the lawyer, and prompt distribution of portions not in dispute. A fee agreement is not proof that the claimed fee was earned, and neither an invoice nor unilateral characterization settles ownership. C029–C031. Wyoming Courts

The published Winship decision supplies a related third-party boundary: a lawyer with notice of a valid assignment of settlement proceeds could not ignore it merely because the lawyer lacked a direct contract with the assignee. The case does not require withholding for every unsupported unsecured-creditor demand. C038. FindLaw Caselaw

5.3 Nonprofit tax qualification is not custody permission

A freshly recovered OLRC §501 body displayed currency only through Public Law 119-120, October 7, 2026. Section 501(q) imposes conditional federal tax-qualification rules on credit-counseling organizations, including restrictions involving related businesses, referrals and creditor-derived revenues. It supplies no Wyoming money-transmitter license and does not prove the state exclusion for a particular entity. C061. US Code+1

The following remain unproved for unusual models: whether an indirect charge is a debtor fee under Chapter 14; whether a creditor-funded operation meets the complete nonprofit exclusion; whether business-purpose services fall outside any particular consumer rule; and whether the actual service satisfies FinCEN’s integral-service analysis. C005, C009–C013, C069.

6. Money transmission, delegates, payee agents, and processors

6.1 Separate state licensing gate

Section 40-22-104 does not provide a general exemption merely because a person is a lawyer, nonprofit counselor, account administrator or processor. Its institutional exclusions have conditions, including the limitation concerning certain noninstitution delegates. Section 103(e) separately allows a properly appointed authorized delegate to operate within the licensee’s authority without its own license. C006–C008, C014. Wyoming Legislature+1

6.2 Wyoming’s fixed federal reference matters

Section 104(a)(viii) references whether a money transmitter is a money-services business under 31 C.F.R. §1010.100(ff), as amended as of January 1, 2020. It is therefore insufficient to inspect only today’s eCFR.

The exact January 1, 2020 online route failed. The relevant text was instead checked in the official 2019 and 2020 annual CFR editions. Their matching §1010.100(ff) language and amendment history provide a historical version check; this is not represented as a successful exact-date fetch. Current federal text was separately read for current federal classification. C008–C009. GovInfo+3

6.3 Labels do not satisfy the exclusions

The federal definition turns on actual acceptance and transmission, with specified exclusions. Particularly relevant are transmission integral to the person’s own non-transmission service and qualifying payment processing through a clearance/settlement system under the required seller/creditor relationship.

A contract with the debtor alone does not establish the payee-side processor conditions described in FinCEN’s 2013 ruling. Nor does being an affiliate of an exempt bank or counselor automatically make a separate entity exempt. C009, C011–C013. eCFR+1

6.4 Regulations and instructions: important verification limit

The Division of Banking’s official page directed to Wyoming’s rule repositories, but the accessible official routes did not yield the operative rule/adoption bodies. Published reproductions of the Wyoming money-transmitter rules were inspected, including the unsafe-or-unsound-practices definition. They were not upgraded to an issuer-verified current adoption package.

Accordingly, the statute-based conclusions stand at their stated scope, while complete current regulation/adoption verification remains partial. The official application page’s NMLS instruction establishes procedure only; no application, license query, or named-entity authorization was performed. C019, C066, C074. Wyoming Banking Division+2

7. Published cases and formal interpretations

One responsive Wyoming Supreme Court majority opinion was examined substantively. Four FinCEN formal administrative rulings were examined for the federal funds-transmission boundary. They are not treated as court judgments or as state-law permissions.

A separate Wyoming disciplinary order was found, but the underlying report needed for the proposed offset factual comparison was not recovered. No holding was reconstructed from a rule annotation. No comprehensive citator or later-history certificate was obtained. The comparison table appears in Section D.

8. Worked cash-flow analysis

Four complete models and additional failure postures appear in Section E. They distinguish:

• lawful-actor and account predicates from arithmetic;
• separate consumer beneficial balances from the pooled bank balance;
• current funds from historical remittances;
• already-paid fees from fees still held;
• undisputed earned amounts from disputed claims;
• customer execution and valid performance from a payment that happened without the required agreement.

No model supplies a Wyoming authorization, insurance conclusion, actual fee-earning determination, or verified holiday deadline.

B. Source register

Every entry was accessed or attempted on October 27, 2026, Pacific. “Selected” means the stated portions, not the entire document. Companion routes are not counted as independent corroboration. For Wyoming statutory PDFs, no separate printed pagination was visible in the relevant pages; zero-based indices are supplied.

C. Atomic claim register

Confidence: “High/text” means the proposition is clear in the examined text, subject to the source-currentness limits. “Conditional” means actual applicability depends on facts not established. “Held” identifies missing evidence or unresolved interpretation.

C1. Classification and money-transmission rules

C2. Lawyer funds

C3. TSR, payment systems, agency, trusts, and remaining limits

D. Source-limited case and formal-ruling comparison

Federal judicial limitation: No responsive federal appellate majority opinion was fully established for this pass. The material federal interpretation contribution is the examined FinCEN formal rulings and FTC final rulemaking, not an invented federal court holding.

E. Four conserved cash-flow models and failure postures

All amounts are USD, shown to two decimal places. Arithmetic uses exact dollars; no fractional-cent rounding issue arises. No real account, provider, borrower or holiday calendar is assumed.

Model 1 — Provider-held DMP ledger with separate consumer balances

Conditional actor: An actual Chapter 14-excluded nonprofit counseling service. Its separate money-transmission status, actual trust/agency terms and authority still require proof. The example does not grant that proof.

Assumptions: No fees, interest or bank charges. All successful creditor payments below are actually received and posted. A failed transfer is actually returned.

Inputs and sequence

Conservation

Contributions = $600 + $400 = $1,000.00

Gross outgoing transfers = $350 + $250 + $100 = $700.00

Returned transfer = $100.00

Net creditor payments = $700 − $100 = $600.00

Current bank funds = $1,000 − $600 = $400.00

Beneficial balances = $250 + $150 = $400.00

Required conditional step: Restore the failed payment to A’s ledger; do not count it as paid to A’s creditor. B’s $150 cannot be used to conceal a shortfall belonging to A.

Missing evidence: Actual account title, legal ownership, transmission exemption/license/delegate facts, creditor posting, return finality, and contractual remittance duties. Correct arithmetic alone establishes none of them. C010–C016, C055–C065.

Model 2 — Consumer-owned third-party account; insufficient performance

Conditional actor: A debt-relief transaction independently within TSR scope and otherwise lawful under applicable state law. Administrator independence, institution status and actual consumer ownership are assumed solely to test the cash flow.

Inputs:

• Consumer contributions: $3,000 + $2,000 = $5,000.00
• Accrued consumer interest: $6.00
• Valid creditor payment already made: $1,200.00
• Provider’s proposed fee: $500.00
• Administrator fees: $0.00
• Provider has only an offer; the required actual customer-executed debt alteration has not occurred.

Current balance:

$5,000 + $6 − $1,200 = $3,806.00

Earned debt-relief fee under the assumed facts:

$0.00

Return following covered service-withdrawal request:

$3,806 − $0 = $3,806.00

Not: $3,806 − $500 = $3,306.00.

The $500 invoice is not a qualifying earned-fee deduction. The customer must receive the $3,806 within the rule’s seven-business-day period; a dashboard showing “withdrawal available” is not the same event.

Missing evidence: Actual TSR scope, state-law authority, agreement/performance facts, independence, ownership, interest, authorization, available funds and business-day calendar. No insurance amount is established. C039–C046.

Model 3 — Lawyer advance: earned, disputed, and unearned portions

Conditional actor: Genuine authorized legal representation under a valid engagement. Assume the stated undisputed work is actually earned and no independent federal advance-fee bar applies. The disputed amount is not assumed earned.

Inputs and sequence

1. Advance received into trust: $1,200.00.
2. Previously earned and properly withdrawn: $300.00.
3. Current trust balance: $1,200 − $300 = $900.00.
4. Lawyer now claims another $300.00:$150.00 undisputed and actually earned.$150.00 disputed.
5. Remaining $600.00 is undisputed and unearned.

Required allocation

$1,200 = $300 + $150 + $600 + $150

The previously withdrawn $300 is not subtracted again from the $900 balance.

Later hypothetical resolution: If a competent resolution awards $100 of the disputed balance to the lawyer and $50 to the client:

• Total lawyer fees: $300 + $150 + $100 = $550.00.
• Total returned to client: $600 + $50 = $650.00.
• Remaining disputed balance: $0.00.
• Conservation: $550 + $650 = $1,200.00.

No such resolution is assumed to exist. A lawyer cannot manufacture it by writing “earned” on the ledger. Any applicable court freeze must also be honored. C029–C036.

Model 4 — TSR return with consistent enrollment balances and prior fees

This is a conditional federal allocation and funds-return example, not a finding that a Wyoming provider may use this fee contract.

Same enrolled debts and method throughout

Assume this proportional method and the total fee are otherwise lawful. No method switching, new enrollment balance or savings-based calculation is introduced.

Historical cash flow

• Consumer contributions: $6,000.00.
• Consumer interest: $12.00.
• A creditor settlement actually paid: $1,000.00.
• B creditor settlement actually paid: $1,500.00.
• A fee properly earned under all required conditions and already withdrawn: $400.00.
• B fee, if all conditions are met, earned but not yet withdrawn: $600.00.
• C has no qualifying performance: $0.00 earned.
• Administrator fees: $0.00.

Current account balance:

$6,000 + $12 − $1,000 − $1,500 − $400 = $3,112.00

Branch A — B satisfies all required earning conditions

Return = $3,112 − $600 = $2,512.00

Conservation:

$6,012 = $2,500 creditor payments + $1,000 total earned fees + $2,512 returned

The prior A fee is already reflected in the current balance. Deducting the entire $1,000 again would double-count $400.

Branch B — B payment happened, but required customer execution is missing

Keep the same historical payments and current balance. The existence of the $1,500 creditor payment does not, by itself, satisfy every fee condition.

Qualifying B fee = $0.00

Return = $3,112.00

Conservation:

$6,012 = $2,500 creditor payments + $400 prior earned A fee + $3,112 returned

The validity and possible recovery of the B creditor payment are separate questions not decided by this example.

Missing evidence for both branches: Actual state-law authority, contract legality, customer execution, debt alteration, payment, earning, account ownership, prior debits, and return receipt. C041–C043, C063.

Smaller failure postures

F. Coverage and gap register

F1. Every assigned question and material subquestion

F2. Broader categories expressly still open

G. Exact contribution crosswalk

H. Failed routes and researcher self-check

H1. Material failed or limited routes

H2. Actual read versus not read

Actually read: Complete operative Chapter14; the identified money-transmitter statutory clauses; relevant reproduced regulatory bodies with provenance limits; historical and current federal transmission definitions; four FinCEN operative rulings; current Rule1.15 and the specified termination provisions; relevant Rule10 order material; current disciplinary protective-appointment and account-freeze provisions; selected handbook guidance; current TSR account/return/record provisions and relevant final-rule passages; specified Regulation E, POA, Trust Code and UCC clauses; dated §501(q); and Winship’s material majority opinion.

Selected rather than whole-document reads: Titles3,4,33,34.1 and40 beyond the identified complete chapter/clauses; professional and disciplinary compilations; annual CFR parts; Federal Register final-rule documents; handbook; Regulation E. No claim that every provision in those larger documents was examined.

Not established: A complete current official money-transmitter rule/adoption package; the separate July21,2026 Rule1.15 amendment order; a complete later-law/citator/supersession audit; actual account contracts or ownership records; actual authority, earning, creditor posting, insurance, solvency, provider status or court restrictions.

Not performed: Private records or named-status inquiries, applications, contacts, filings, purchases, account changes, browser control, new chats, subagents, local writes, hashes, publication or independent review.

Final component determination

The controlling distinction is who legally owns and controls which money at each stage. Wyoming’s provider prohibition, a conditional exclusion, a transmission exemption, a professional trust obligation, a consumer-owned dedicated account and a bank’s payment duties are separate legal layers.

This pass establishes their principal funds-control boundaries without treating an account label as permission, an available balance as final payment, an invoice as earning, or a transfer request as receipt. The identified official-source, actual-fact, financial-assurance, insolvency, broader-state and publication holds remain open.

END S_WY PASS-03.