By Indy Senior Advisor Care Team · September 23, 2026
Most families believe Indiana simply bans winter utility shutoffs. It does not. Protection runs December 1 to March 15 only for households that applied for energy assistance and told the utility so. Applications open October 1.
The belief that costs people their heat
Ask around and you will hear some version of the same sentence: they can't shut off your heat in the winter in Indiana. It is one of those things everybody knows, and it is not true as stated.
The actual law is Indiana Code 8-1-2-121, passed by the General Assembly in 1983. It says an electric or natural gas utility may not disconnect residential service between December 1 and March 15 if the customer is receiving help from the federally funded Energy Assistance Program, or is qualified for it, has formally applied at the local intake office, and has given the utility written proof of that application.
Every word of that conditional matters. Protection is not a status your parent has because they are 78 and it is January. It is something a household switches on by filing an application and then telling the utility company it did. The Indiana Office of Utility Consumer Counselor, the state agency that represents ratepayers, states this plainly: the only factors that qualify a consumer for the moratorium are whether the consumer receives or qualifies for and has applied for those funds.
For an adult child watching a parent on a fixed income go into a central Indiana winter, this is a two-hour errand in October that prevents a February emergency. It is worth understanding exactly.
What the moratorium covers, and the gaps that surprise people
The protection reaches further than many assume in one direction and stops well short in another.
It applies to electric and natural gas service from every kind of utility in Indiana: investor-owned companies like AES Indiana and Citizens Energy Group, municipally owned utilities, and rural electric membership cooperatives. There is no carve-out for small-town or co-op service.
It does not apply to bulk fuels. If your parent heats with propane or fuel oil, which a meaningful number of households in rural Boone, Hancock and western Hendricks County still do, the moratorium does nothing for them. Nobody is legally obligated to keep filling the tank. It also does not cover water, sewer, or phone and internet service.
There is no exception for age, for cold temperatures, or for small children in the home. The OUCC is direct about this: Indiana law leaves those judgments entirely to the utility's discretion. A 90-year-old in an unheated house in January has no statutory protection that a 30-year-old lacks. The application is the protection.
One narrow additional rule is worth knowing. A utility must postpone a disconnection for 10 days if you provide a medical statement from a licensed physician or a public health official. Ten days is a bridge, not a solution, but it can buy the time an application needs.
The dates for this winter
The 2026-2027 program year is the one that matters now. The statewide online application portal opens October 1, 2026.
Local agencies do not all start on the same day, and this trips families up. Area IV Agency, which handles Boone and Hendricks counties, tells applicants its 2026-2027 program begins November 1. IndyEAP, the Marion County agency, opens October 1. Both are accurate, because the state portal and local in-person intake are different doors into the same program.
What is uniform statewide is the back end. No benefit notification goes out and no payment pledge reaches a utility before November 1. Applying on October 1 does not get money moving in October. It does start the clock, and under the state's own rules an agency has up to 55 days from November 1 to determine eligibility on a non-crisis application.
Moratorium protection runs December 1, 2026 through March 15, 2027. In Marion County the final day to submit an application is 5 p.m. on April 30, 2027.
Then there is the part nobody plans for: after approval, benefits are paid directly to the utility, and it can take another 60 days for the credit to actually appear on the bill. Between filing and seeing anything change, a household can easily be looking at three months or more. This is why October, not December, is the month to do it.
Who to call, county by county
Central Indiana families get used to one answer for the whole metro, because CICOA Aging & In-Home Solutions is the single Area Agency on Aging for Marion, Hamilton, Hendricks, Johnson, Boone and Hancock counties. Energy assistance does not work that way. It is county by county, run by five different organizations across those six counties.
Marion County is served by IndyEAP, reachable at 317-808-2378. Hamilton County goes through Good Samaritan Network in Fishers, at 317-842-2603. Boone and Hendricks counties are both served by Area IV Agency, at 765-447-7683, with a Boone office in Lebanon and a Hendricks office in Brownsburg. Hancock County is handled by Interlocal Community Action Program in Greenfield, at 317-462-2557. Johnson County is served by Human Services, Inc., at 800-296-8026.
If you are not certain which office covers an address, two shortcuts work anywhere in the state. Dial 2-1-1, or call the Indiana Housing and Community Development Authority at 1-800-872-0371 for the county-by-county directory. The online application at the state portal routes to the right agency on its own.
For families managing this from another state, the application can be submitted online with documents attached. You do not have to be in the room.
What actually counts as qualifying income
Statewide, a household may qualify at or below 60 percent of Indiana's state median income, and eligibility is assessed on the most recent three months of income for every household member 18 and older.
Three months, not twelve, is the detail that changes outcomes. A parent whose annual figure looks too high because of a one-time retirement distribution last spring may qualify comfortably on the last three months. The reverse is also true. It is worth actually running the numbers rather than assuming.
IndyEAP publishes its Marion County thresholds as three-month household income: $8,658 for one person, $11,323 for two, $13,987 for three, and $16,651 for four. A single older adult living on Social Security alone falls under that ceiling far more often than families expect.
Social Security, SSDI and SSI all count, and the agencies want every page of the award letter, not just the page showing the amount. Incomplete documentation is the most common reason an application stalls. In Marion County, IndyEAP specifically does not want a photo ID, Social Security card, lease or birth certificate submitted; other counties ask for more. Follow the instructions of the agency that covers the address, not a checklist from somewhere else.
One counterintuitive rule: in Marion County, a household carrying a credit balance over $250 with a metered utility may be approved but receive no dollar benefit. It is still worth applying, because approval carries the moratorium protection regardless.
The problem that arrives on March 16
The moratorium stops a disconnection. It does not forgive a dollar.
That distinction lands hard in spring. A household that stops paying in December because it believes it is protected can reach March 16 owing four months of winter usage, all of it collectible, with disconnection now permitted. The OUCC urges consumers covered by the moratorium to keep paying through the winter even if only partially, because a partial payment demonstrates good faith and dramatically lowers the odds of a spring shutoff.
Indiana law also gives any residential customer with a delinquent account the right to request a reasonable amortization agreement, a structured payment plan to work the balance down over time. The customer has to ask. Utilities are not required to volunteer it.
There is a second benefit worth knowing about for households already in trouble. Beyond the regular one-time benefit, a crisis benefit is available when a household has a disconnection notice, has already been disconnected, or is nearly out of bulk fuel. For the 2026-2027 year IndyEAP lists that additional crisis benefit at up to $400 per utility. Under the state's rules, an agency must take a mitigating action within 48 hours of a documented heating crisis, and within 18 hours when a household is already disconnected and there is a documented medical need with an extreme safety concern.
If a parent is at that stage, say the word crisis when you call. It changes the timeline the agency is operating under.
What a utility bill reveals about whether home is still working
This is where energy assistance stops being a utilities topic and becomes a care topic.
A thermostat set to 58 degrees in December is sometimes frugality. Often it is a person rationing because the bill frightened them and they did not want to mention it. Space heaters in rooms that used to be heated normally, unopened envelopes from the utility stacked on a counter, a shutoff notice tucked in a drawer, a parent who suddenly spends all day in one room: each of these is a fact about money, and also a fact about judgment, isolation and safety.
Take them seriously as both. A household that cannot manage a heating bill usually cannot absorb the cost of in-home care either, which makes the benefits conversation urgent rather than optional. Indiana's CHOICE program, the PathWays Waiver, township trustee assistance and the property tax credits with a January 15 deadline are separate programs with separate applications, and a family already gathering income documents for energy assistance is holding most of what the others need.
Two more programs belong on the list. The federally funded Weatherization Assistance Program provides free energy work, including repair or replacement of a failing heating system, insulation and air sealing, and it prioritizes households with elderly residents. Its income test is different from energy assistance, at 150 percent of the federal poverty level, so qualifying for one does not tell you about the other. Apply through the same local community action agency. Separately, the PathWays Waiver covers home modifications for those enrolled.
Start with CICOA's Resource Center at 317-803-6131. One call gets a free options assessment across all of it, and it is the right first call whether the question turns out to be a furnace or whether living alone still works.
The next two weeks
Applications open October 1. Between now and then, a few things are worth doing while there is no pressure.
Find out how the house is actually heated, and confirm it in person rather than by memory. Gas, all-electric and propane lead to three different conversations, and only the first two get moratorium protection. Pull together the last three months of income documentation for everyone in the household over 18, including every page of any Social Security award letter. Locate the most recent heat and electric bills.
Then have the conversation that is harder than the paperwork. Ask directly whether the bills have been getting paid. A parent who has been quietly falling behind will usually not raise it, and money running out is among the last things people volunteer to their children.
File in the first half of October. Then call the utility, tell them an application has been submitted, and ask what written proof they need on file. That last call is the step most people skip, and under the statute it is the one that makes the protection real.
None of this is a substitute for deciding whether home is still the right place. But it buys a safe winter to decide in, which is usually what a family needs most. If the honest answer is that this winter is already too much for one person to manage alone, that is worth naming now rather than in February.
