USA – INDIANA Trends and Developments Contributed by: Andrew Z. Soshnick, Faegre Drinker Biddle & Reath LLP
Indiana Family Law in Transition: Legislative Shifts, Economic Change, and Evolving Domestic Issues Effective as of 1 July 2025, the Indiana Code 31-17- 2-8.2 requires trial courts to provide specific findings of fact and conclusions of law in custody cases. The 2024 revisions to the Indiana Child Support Rules and Guidelines, incorporating more recent cost and expense data and revising the underlying child sup ‑ port formula, lead to a significant increase in child support obligations. The former “6% Rule” related to payment of uninsured health care expenses is elimi ‑ nated, with each party paying his and her pro rata share of these costs from the first uninsured dollar incurred rather than after a threshold has been met. In the second year of application, the new child sup ‑ port guidelines have garnered favourable response, although many still question whether the presumptive amounts have been updated sufficiently to capture cost-of-living increases and whether, at higher income levels, it is disguised spousal maintenance. In this short session year of the Indiana General Assembly, a bill is expected to be introduced to com ‑ mittees for reading seeking presumptive joint legal custody and joint physical custody. This has been a trend in each of the last several legislative sessions. Indiana defines legal custody as making major life decisions (eg, health, education, and religion). Physi ‑ cal custody involves the allocation of parenting time. Over the last four years, Indiana legislators have attempted to advance bills for both types of custody to be presumptively equal. Other states have adopted these rules without great success, and some states have rescinded these presumptions. Several legisla ‑ tors have taken on this cause and are presenting vari ‑ ous versions of these bills in an effort to garner major ‑ ity support. So far, those efforts have yet to succeed. But, they have attracted the attention and support of others. With this forward movement, expect legislative efforts to continue on this issue and be at the forefront of family law in the Indiana General Assembly. The trend of revisiting Indiana spousal maintenance laws is due to reappear. Indiana family law has long favoured the income spouse. The state’s spousal maintenance laws are among the least generous in the United States and see parties attempt to obtain jurisdiction in Indiana to avoid onerous spousal main ‑
tenance issues in other states. When the Indiana Dissolution of Marriage Act was enacted in 1973, the trade-off was to include all property as marital property, regardless of how it was titled or how or when it was acquired, and to statutorily presume an equal division of marital estates. That statutory regime remains largely unchanged 50 years later. Since the 1980s, several attempts have been made to expand Indiana’s spousal maintenance laws, to no avail. The Indiana General Assembly meets in alternating years in short and long sessions, neither of which is con ‑ sidered long temporally. While rumblings are heard that the spousal maintenance issue will resurface, that is not anticipated for 2026. The expectation is that, with the changing demographics of the legislature, proposed bills to expand spousal maintenance rights may appear in the near future. If a bill of that nature does gain traction, anticipate that some will call for Indiana to re-evaluate its “one pot” definition of marital property that leaves the state as one of the few that does not have a separate property classification that removes certain property from division at divorce. Given the over half-century history of Indiana’s divorce laws, there is not a huge appetite to tackle changing the statutory regime of what is and what is not mari ‑ tal property. While courts, by statute and case law, can deviate from the presumptive equal division of marital estates on the basis of gifted, inherited, and premarital property, the proponent of the deviation bears the burden of proof. That has ruffled the feath ‑ ers of many who believe that Indiana should have a separate property classification that is non-marital in status. Independently, this issue is not likely in the offing. But if spousal maintenance reform advances, the entire equitable distribution scheme may be on the table for the legislature. Another area of potential development relates to post- marital agreements. Indiana has not adopted a version of the Uniform Marital Property Act that provides for post-marital agreements. As a result, case law from 1991–2017 has left some confusion as to the valid ‑ ity and enforceability of such agreements. Although recent appellate decisions focus on whether this type of contract, if valid and enforceable, will preserve and extend a marriage that otherwise would be dissolved, the application of this standard has proved elusive
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