By Indy Senior Advisor Care Team · August 7, 2026
Indiana law lists fifteen things an assisted living contract must contain and four sentences it must say. It also lets the building write exceptions into most of them. Here is how to read the paperwork before your mother moves in.
A Word Indiana Actually Regulates
Most states let any building call itself assisted living. Indiana does not, and the reason is a statute almost no family has heard of.
Under IC 12-10-15, an operator has to file a disclosure document with the director of the state's Division of Aging for each "housing with services establishment" it runs. If it has not filed, two things become true at once: it may not enter into or extend a residency contract with anyone, and it may not use the term assisted living to describe itself to the public. That is the actual language of IC 12-10-15-7.
A housing with services establishment is defined in IC 12-10-15-3 as a place that provides sleeping accommodations to at least five residents and, for a fee, offers either one regularly scheduled health-related service or two regularly scheduled supportive services. Supportive services are narrower than they sound: personal laundry, handling a resident's funds, or arranging medical, health-related or social services. Making a referral or helping someone call a provider they chose themselves does not count. Nursing homes, hospitals, licensed group homes, shelters and mostly owner-occupied condo associations are carved out.
This is separate from licensing, and the separation confuses nearly everyone. The Indiana Department of Health licenses Residential Care Facilities under 410 IAC 16.2-5. The Division of Aging, part of FSSA, collects the housing-with-services disclosure. FSSA's own guidance says both licensed and unlicensed residential care facilities that meet the housing-with-services definition have to file the annual disclosure, State Form 49028. So a building can be unlicensed and still owe this filing. A building can also be licensed and let the filing lapse.
The Fifteen Things the Contract Has to Contain
IC 12-10-15-9 does not just require a contract. It lists what has to be in it, in the contract itself or in attachments, in what the statute calls clear and understandable language. Fifteen elements, and the useful ones are the last third of the list.
The opening items are identifying information: the establishment's name and addresses, the owner's name and mailing address and, if the owner is not a person, what kind of business entity it is, plus the managing agent if that differs from the owner. Then a statement describing the disclosure document and licensure status of the establishment and of anyone providing health-related or supportive services under arrangement with it. That one is worth reading closely. It is where a building discloses that the aide helping your father bathe works for a separate company.
Next: the term of the contract, a description of the services included in the base rate, a description of any additional services available for a fee, and the fee schedules for those additional services. If a community hands you a base rent and says care levels are assessed later, the statute already entitles you to the schedule that prices those levels. Ask for it by name.
Then the process for modifying, amending or terminating the contract; the establishment's complaint resolution process; the resident's designated representative, if any; and the referral procedures the establishment follows if the contract is terminated. Then billing and payment procedures.
The two that matter most are numbers thirteen and fourteen. Thirteen requires the criteria the establishment uses to decide who may continue to live there, and the statute specifies the criteria must address two situations: when a resident has to be transferred because the establishment and the resident cannot work out a way for that person to respond to an emergency consistent with local fire and safety requirements, and when the establishment cannot assure that a resident's physical, mental and psychosocial needs are met. Fourteen requires a description of how needs get assessed on admission and periodically afterward, with the resident and their representative involved.
Read thirteen and fourteen together and you have the building's own written answer to the question every family asks on a tour and rarely gets straight: at what point do you tell us she has to leave?
Four Sentences the Contract Must Say, and the Escape Hatch in Each
IC 12-10-15-9(c) goes further than disclosure. It requires the contract to affirmatively state four things.
First, that except as stated in the contract, residency may not be terminated because a resident's health or care needs changed. Second, that the establishment may not restrict a resident's ability to do things away from the building, regardless of the time, duration or distance involved. Third, that except to protect other residents' rights and activities, it may not restrict visitors or family. Fourth, that except as stated in the contract and identified in the disclosure document, the operator may not restrict a resident's choice of home health agency, home health provider or case management service, and may not require a resident to use home health services.
Now read the qualifiers again. Three of those four begin with except as stated in the contract. The protection is real, and the carve-out is in the same building's paperwork. So the question on a tour is not whether the contract contains the sentence. It will. The question is what the contract states as the exception.
The fourth one is the one that costs families money. A community that has quietly written its preferred home health agency into the contract has converted your parent's choice of provider into a captive referral, and it is allowed to do that as long as it states the restriction in the contract and identifies it in the disclosure document. If you are already using a home care agency you trust, this is the clause to find before you sign, not after.
IC 12-10-15-9(a) is the enforcement backstop for all of it: each resident or their representative must be given a complete copy of the contract and all supporting documents and attachments, and given the changes whenever changes are made. A binder you were shown once in a conference room does not satisfy that. Ask for the whole packet to take home.
And IC 12-10-15-9(d) sets a floor on the way out: except where the health or safety of the resident or others is endangered, the operator has to give at least thirty days notice before terminating residency.
What Has to Be Handed to You on Admission Day
If the community is a licensed Residential Care Facility, a second and more detailed set of obligations kicks in under 410 IAC 16.2-5-1.2, the residents' rights rule.
Residents have to be advised of their rights before admission and sign for them on admission, and the facility has to keep a copy posted in a publicly accessible area, in at least 12-point type, in a language the resident understands. Subsection (e) then lists what has to be provided at the time of admission: a copy of the admission agreement, written notice of the basic daily or monthly rate, a written statement of all facility services including the as-needed ones, information on related charges and on admission, readmission and discharge policies, and the facility's policy on voluntary termination by the resident, including what happens to any entrance fee or deposit paid on move-in.
That last item is the one families discover too late. If a community collects a community fee or deposit, its written policy on what happens to that money if your mother leaves voluntarily is something you are entitled to have in hand on day one. Get it before the check clears, not after.
Subsection (e) also requires that if the facility has to file an Alzheimer's and dementia special care unit disclosure, you get a copy of the completed form. That is the filing we covered in our piece on Indiana's dementia disclosure law. It is a disclosure, not a certification, and there is no memory care license to hang on a wall in this state.
Three more admission-day requirements are easy to overlook. Any limitation on the resident's right to choose their own attending physician or service provider has to be clearly stated in the admission agreement. So does any limitation on keeping a pet. So does the facility's overnight guest policy. If a salesperson tells you visitors can stay over and the agreement is silent or says otherwise, the agreement is what governs.
The Thirty-Day Rule and the Phone List Nobody Reads
410 IAC 16.2-5-1.2(g) is short and worth memorizing: residents have the right to be informed in writing, at least thirty days in advance of the effective date, of any change in the rates or in the services those rates cover.
Note the second half. Thirty days notice applies not only when the price goes up but when what the price buys goes down. A community that keeps the rent flat and moves three services out of the base rate into the fee schedule has changed the services the rates cover, and the same thirty-day written notice applies.
Subsection (h) requires the facility to furnish, on admission, a statement that the resident may file a complaint with the director about abuse, neglect, misappropriation of resident property and other facility practices, along with the most recently known addresses and phone numbers for the Indiana Department of Health, the office of the secretary of FSSA, the ombudsman, the area agency on aging, the local mental health center, and Adult Protective Services. Those have to be posted where residents can see them and updated as appropriate.
In the Indianapolis metro that list resolves to a short set of numbers that are the same in all six counties this site covers: the Region 8 long-term care ombudsman at 317-631-9424 or the statewide line at 800-622-4484; CICOA Aging & In-Home Solutions, the Area Agency on Aging for Marion, Hamilton, Hendricks, Johnson, Boone and Hancock counties, at 317-803-6131 or 800-432-2422; Indiana's statewide Adult Protective Services line at 1-800-992-6978; and IDOH's facility complaint line at 1-800-246-8909, which IDOH itself notes is voicemail and which it would rather you bypass in favor of its online complaint form. We walked through which of those to call in which situation earlier this year.
Subsection (i) adds one more: the state-developed written description of Indiana's advance directive law goes to every resident on admission.
Money, Medicaid, and What the Building Is Holding for You
If the facility participates in the Medicaid waiver program or the residential care assistance program or both, 410 IAC 16.2-5-1.2(l) requires it to give residents written information on how to apply for Medicaid benefits and for room and board assistance.
That requirement only binds a facility that participates. It is not a disclosure of whether it participates, which is why the question has to be asked directly and answered in writing. Indiana's PathWays Waiver, which replaced the Aged and Disabled Waiver for Hoosiers 60 and older on July 1, 2024, pays for care services and does not pay for room and board. Room and board help in a licensed facility runs through RCAP, the Residential Care Assistance Program, a separate Medicaid category. A community can hold a PathWays provider agreement, an RCAP agreement, both, or neither. Our page on Medicaid waivers and assisted living lays out the split.
There is a second money question buried in subsection (t). A resident has the right to manage their own funds, and a facility may only handle them on the resident's written request. If it does, it owes a quarterly accounting, has to keep resident money separate from operating accounts, has to hold anything over one hundred dollars in a separate interest-bearing account crediting the interest to the resident, has to return funds within fifteen calendar days of a written request, and has to convey the balance and a final accounting to whoever administers the estate within thirty days of a resident's death. If a community offers to run a resident trust account for your father's spending money, those are the terms it is agreeing to.
On the actual price, be careful what you accept as a benchmark. The 2025 CareScout Cost of Care Survey puts Indiana's median assisted living cost at $5,639 a month for a private one-bedroom, a semi-private nursing home room at $8,943, a private nursing home room at $10,326, and non-medical home care at $35 an hour. Those are statewide medians. CareScout does not publish an Indianapolis-metro figure and does not survey memory care at all, in Indiana or anywhere else. Any local average or memory care median quoted to you is an estimate, and the contract's own fee schedule is the only number that will actually appear on your parent's bill.
What Happens When a Building Ignores All This
Indiana attached real penalties to the disclosure statute and softer ones to the residents' rights rule, which is worth knowing before you decide where to complain.
Under IC 12-10-15-15, the Division of Aging director enforces the disclosure chapter and may impose a penalty of not less than one hundred dollars and not more than one thousand dollars for each day of violation, capped at ten thousand dollars per violation. For substantial and repeated violations, the director may prohibit the establishment from using the term assisted living publicly at all. If the director finds an operator or administrator intentionally violated the chapter or made fraudulent and material misrepresentations to a resident, the director may ask the attorney general to investigate.
The residents' rights rule grades breaches on a scale. Under 410 IAC 16.2-5-1.2(kk), the admission-disclosure items in subsections (a), (e), (f), (g), (h), (i) and (l) are classified as noncompliance, the mildest tier. The transfer and discharge protections in subsection (r) and the care-participation rights in (j) are deficiencies. Only physical or chemical restraints for discipline or convenience, and abuse or neglect, rise to an offense.
The honest read is that a building failing to hand you the right paperwork is a lower-stakes finding for the state than a building restraining someone. That does not make the paperwork unimportant. It means the leverage a family has at signing is mostly practical rather than punitive, which is exactly why the leverage is largest before anyone moves in.
If the notice ever goes the other direction and your parent is the one being asked to leave, the process is far more prescriptive. We covered what Indiana requires of a discharge notice in detail, including the ten-day appeal window.
Doing This on an Actual Tour Next Week
Start before the tour. FSSA's guidance says facilities with an approved State Form 49028 are listed on the INconnect Alliance public search site, and that expired disclosures are automatically removed from it. That gives you a free check with a real consequence attached: a building holding itself out as assisted living that you cannot find on the state's housing-with-services search is worth a direct question. Ask when its disclosure was last filed and whose fiscal year it runs on, because the filing expires four months after the end of the establishment's fiscal year with no extension.
Then use IC 12-10-15-12(c), which is the single most underused sentence in this whole area of Indiana law. The disclosure document must be provided to a prospective resident or their legal guardian, and made readily available to a resident or their guardian. You do not have to be a resident. You do not have to have deposited anything. Ask for the disclosure document, which includes the contract to be executed with residents, and read it at your kitchen table rather than across a desk from someone whose job is to lease apartments.
Bring four questions with you. What are the criteria under which my mother would have to leave, in writing. What is the fee schedule for every care level above the base rate. Does the contract restrict which home health agency we can bring in. And what happens to the community fee if she moves out voluntarily in the first ninety days.
Ask two more that are not in any statute but predict more than the paperwork does. What were your actual rate increases in each of the last three years, and what is the overnight staffing in this building specifically, not company-wide. Our page on choosing between two communities covers the rest of the tiebreakers.
And verify the license separately. Some Indiana buildings marketed as assisted living hold no state license at all, because under 410 IAC 16.2-5-0.5(c) a community that provides only room, board, housekeeping and activities without administering medication is not required to hold one. That is legal, it is not necessarily a problem, and it is absolutely something to know before signing. Our page on verifying a facility license shows where to look.
If any of this turns up something you cannot interpret, CICOA's resource center at 317-803-6131 will do options counseling at no cost, and the Region 8 ombudsman at 317-631-9424 will read a contract clause with you without charging for it or having anything to sell.
