By Indy Senior Advisor Care Team · July 29, 2026
Indiana law limits why a licensed Residential Care Facility can make a resident leave, and spells out exact notice periods and appeal rights. Here's what the notice your family received is supposed to say, and what happens if it doesn't.
The Six Reasons — Not "Because We Said So"
A letter arrives from your mother's assisted living community. It says she has thirty days to leave. No phone call first, no meeting, just a form. Families in this position usually assume the facility can do this for almost any reason. Indiana law says otherwise.
Every Residential Care Facility (RCF) in Indiana — the single license type that covers what most people call assisted living, under 410 IAC 16.2-5 — is only allowed to transfer or discharge a resident for one of six specific reasons. The facility's needs, preferences, or convenience are not on the list.
The six are: the resident's welfare requires a move and the facility can't meet their needs; the resident's health has improved enough that they no longer need the facility's services; the safety of other people in the building is at risk; the health of other people in the building is at risk; the resident has failed to pay after being given reasonable notice; or the facility itself is closing.
That's the whole list. A community cannot discharge a resident because a new owner wants to reposition the building, because a family member complained too often, or because a resident's adult child asked hard questions on a tour. If the notice you received doesn't map cleanly onto one of these six reasons, that's worth raising directly with the facility's administrator, in writing, before anything else.
The Notice: What the Paper Is Legally Required to Say
Indiana doesn't just require notice — it requires a specific document with specific contents, on a form the state prescribes (State Form 49669). If your family's notice is missing pieces of this, that's not just an oversight; it's a compliance gap you can point to.
The written notice has to include the reason for the move, the effective date, and where the resident is being sent. It also has to include a statement, printed in no smaller than 12-point bold type, telling the resident they have the right to appeal — word for word, the regulation requires language explaining the ten-day window to request a hearing and the fact that they can't be moved earlier than thirty-four days after receiving the notice if they appeal.
The notice must also list the Indiana Department of Health's contact information, a hearing-request form, and the name, address, and phone number of the state and local long-term-care ombudsman. If your parent's notice arrived as a short letter with none of this, ask the administrator directly for the state-form version — they're required to use it.
Outside of an emergency (more on that below), this whole notice has to go out at least thirty days before the actual move date. Not thirty days from when the family finally reads it — thirty days from when the facility delivers it, which is why the delivery date itself matters and is worth writing down the day it happens.
When Thirty Days Doesn't Apply
There's a real exception, and it matters to understand it so a facility can't stretch it to cover a situation it doesn't fit. Indiana allows a facility to give notice "as soon as practicable" — meaning much less than thirty days — only in narrow circumstances: the safety of others in the facility is genuinely endangered, the health of others is endangered, the resident's health has improved enough to allow a faster move, an urgent medical need requires it, or the resident simply hasn't lived there thirty days yet.
A facility citing "disruptive behavior" in general terms, without connecting it to an actual safety risk to specific people, is leaning on a reason that doesn't clearly fit the emergency exception. That's a point worth raising directly, and a point the state's Long Term Care Ombudsman office can help evaluate if the family isn't sure.
This distinction comes up often with dementia-related behavior. A resident who wanders or becomes agitated isn't automatically an emergency-discharge case — the facility still has to show the specific safety concern, and the memory-care disclosure rules already require staff to be trained for exactly this kind of behavior in a locked or segregated unit.
The Ten-Day Window to Appeal
If your family disagrees with the discharge, Indiana gives a resident (or their legal representative) the right to request a hearing with the Indiana Department of Health. The request has to be in writing and postmarked within ten days of receiving the notice — not ten days from when someone gets around to reading it carefully, ten days from actual receipt. Mark the date on the envelope the day it arrives.
Once a hearing is requested, the state has to hold it within twenty-three days, and — this is the part that actually protects a family in the moment — the resident cannot be forced to leave earlier than thirty-four days after they received the original notice, unless one of the emergency circumstances above genuinely applies. Filing the appeal buys real time, not just a hearing date.
The facility has to prove its case. At the hearing, the burden is on the facility to convince the state, by a preponderance of the evidence, that the move is actually authorized under one of the six reasons. The resident isn't required to prove the facility is wrong; the facility has to prove it's right.
Either side can seek further administrative or judicial review afterward under Indiana's general administrative law statute. In practice, most disputes resolve at or before the informal hearing stage — but knowing the appeal exists, and that it has real teeth, changes how a family reads that first letter.
If Nonpayment Is the Reason
Nonpayment discharges get one extra protection that's easy to miss. If the stated reason is failure to pay, the resident has the right to pay the balance owed at any point up to the actual transfer date — and if they do, they're entitled to stay. A notice for nonpayment isn't a closed door until the deadline actually passes with the balance still unpaid.
This matters for families juggling a Medicaid application, a pending PathWays waiver or RCAP agreement, or a slow VA claim — a gap in payment while paperwork moves through the system is not automatically a lost cause. Paying the arrears, even at the last date before transfer, restores the resident's right to remain.
The Relocation Planning Conference
For a non-emergency move, Indiana requires more than a letter — it requires an actual planning process. Before a resident is relocated, the facility is supposed to hold a relocation planning conference and invite the resident, their legal representative, family members, and their physician to it. The resident can waive this conference, but the facility has to offer it.
At that conference, the resident's medical, psychosocial, and social needs around the move are supposed to be discussed and a plan built around them — not just an address to move to. If a family disputes the plan that comes out of that conference, Indiana requires a separate meeting with the administrator before the move goes forward, and a written report of that meeting goes into the resident's permanent file.
In practice, a lot of Indianapolis-area facilities skip straight to the notice letter without ever holding this conference. That's worth asking about directly: a family can request the conference even if the facility hasn't offered it.
Who Else Is Supposed to Get a Copy
The notice isn't just between the facility and the resident. For any involuntary transfer or discharge, Indiana requires the facility to send a copy to the local long-term-care ombudsman program — for the Indianapolis metro, that's Indiana Legal Services' Region 8 office. A copy also goes to any known family member and legal representative, and to the resident's physician when the reason involves a safety or health finding.
The ombudsman doesn't license or fine a facility — that's the Department of Health's role — but the ombudsman advocates for the resident specifically and free of charge, and getting a copy of every involuntary discharge notice is exactly how that office keeps track of what's happening across the region. If a family calls the ombudsman before an appeal deadline passes, that call is on the record as part of the process the law anticipated, not a workaround.
What to Actually Do the Day the Notice Arrives
Write the date it arrived on the envelope itself, not just the letter — the ten-day appeal clock and the thirty-day notice clock both run from receipt, and that date becomes the thing everything else is measured against.
Read the notice against the six allowed reasons above. If it doesn't clearly state one of them, or states one but doesn't explain how it applies to this specific resident, say so in writing to the administrator before the ten days run out.
Call the Region 8 ombudsman the same week — 317-631-9424, or the statewide line at 800-622-4484 — even if the family isn't sure yet whether to appeal. The ombudsman can look at the notice and say plainly whether it meets the state's requirements.
If the family decides to appeal, put the hearing request in writing and mail it so the postmark lands within ten days of receipt. A same-day trip to the post office with a hand-cancelled stamp is not excessive caution here — it's the difference the law actually draws.
None of this guarantees a resident gets to stay indefinitely. A facility that genuinely can't meet a resident's needs, or a resident whose presence genuinely endangers others, has a real path to a lawful discharge. What the process guarantees is that the facility has to prove it, on the record, before the resident is forced out — and that a family gets real time to respond rather than thirty days that turn out to be five.
