A Wyoming settlement failed over whether a restriction would be recorded
A Wyoming settlement failed over whether a restriction would be recorded
2026-09-19 · Wyoming · Courts
What happened. The Wyoming Supreme Court affirmed a finding that neighbouring landowners who came out of mediation with a deal covering ditch access and a “visual storage restriction” had no enforceable settlement at all, because they never reached a meeting of the minds on material terms — including whether the restriction was to run with the land as a recorded covenant or bind only the person who promised it.
The case
Cross v. Albright, 2026 WY 75, docket S-25-0297, was decided July 8, 2026. Justice Hill wrote for a unanimous Court. Affirmed.1
The parties mediated a dispute over access to a ditch and over storage visible from the neighbouring property. One side argued that a recordable easement and a restrictive covenant were necessary to give the agreement effect. The other said those were additional terms that had never been agreed. The Court held there was no enforceable settlement.
Why the gap was material
The distinction the parties skipped is not a formality. A covenant running with the land binds every successor owner, appears in a title search, and survives the promisor’s sale. A personal promise binds one person, does not appear in the record, and dies with the transaction. The two produce different prices, different title insurance, and different enforcement in ten years’ time. Leaving it open meant there was no agreement on what the parties were actually trading.
Where this touches association practice
Wyoming has no comprehensive HOA statute, no statutory alternative-dispute procedure for community associations, and no mandatory mediation step. Covenant disputes here are resolved either by the declaration’s own enforcement clause or in district court, and a very large share settle. Cross is about the settlement stage, and about the single most common ambiguity in a negotiated covenant outcome.
A settlement that changes what an owner may do with a lot has to decide, expressly, which of these it is:
- A recorded covenant or restriction — binding successors, indexed against the legal description, and appearing on a title commitment. It needs the legal description, a recording direction, and language that the burden runs with the land.
- A recorded easement — for access, drainage, ditch maintenance or utilities, with a described location and scope.
- A personal covenant or licence — binding only the signing owner, often revocable, and invisible to a buyer.
The Court treated the choice between the first and the third as a material term, not a detail of implementation. Where a mediated term sheet says an owner “will keep stored equipment out of view” and stops there, it has not said which of these it means, and on this authority a Wyoming court need not choose for the parties.
The ditch half
The access half of the deal has its own Wyoming character. Ditch access, headgate maintenance and the right to cross a neighbour’s ground to reach a lateral are recurring subjects in Wyoming subdivisions built on formerly irrigated land, and they are the sort of arrangement that is often handled by long practice rather than by a recorded instrument. This case ends with neither an easement nor a settlement.
How it fits the 2026 covenant decisions
Read alongside Clark v. Fuller, 2025 WY 92, which turned on an ambiguous CC&R access clause, and Hein v. Carlson, 2026 WY 33, in which recorded restrictions were used as evidence of a boundary, Cross completes a pattern in the Wyoming Supreme Court’s recent property work: the document is asked to say what it means, and where it does not, the Court declines to supply the missing term. That is the same instinct expressed in Rafter J Ranch Homeowner’s Ass’n v. Stage Stop, Inc., 2024 WY 114, where the Court would not read a 1977 master plan into covenants that did not incorporate it.
What the case does not hold
It does not hold that a settlement must be recorded, or that an oral covenant is always unenforceable. It holds that these parties did not agree on which kind of obligation they were creating, and that without that agreement there was no contract to enforce.
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