USA – INDIANA Trends and Developments Contributed by: Drew Soshnick, Faegre Drinker Biddle & Reath, LLP
The Impact of Ongoing Socioeconomic, Demographic and Legislative Changes on Family Law in Indiana Effective 1 January 2024, the Indiana Supreme Court revised its Child Support Rules and Guidelines to incorporate more recent cost and expense data. This revision, the first to the under - lying child support formula, leads to a significant increase in child support obligations. The for - mer “6% Rule” related to payment of uninsured health care expenses is eliminated, with each party paying their pro rata share of these costs from the first uninsured dollar incurred rather than after a threshold has been met.In the first year of application, the new child support guide - lines have been well received – although many still question whether the presumptive amounts have been updated sufficiently to capture cost- of-living increases. In this long session year of the Indiana General Assembly, at least two bills are expected to be introduced to committees for reading, seeking presumptive joint legal custody and joint physi - cal custody. This has been a trend in each of the last few legislative sessions. Indiana defines legal custody as making major life decisions (eg, health, education, and religion). Physical cus - tody involves the allocation of parenting time. During the past three 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 Other states have adopted these rules without great success and some states have rescinded these presump - tions. Several legislators have taken on this cause and are presenting various versions of these bills in an effort to garner majority support. So far, those efforts have yet to succeed. However, 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. Proposed bills to expand spousal maintenance rights The trend of revisiting Indiana spousal main - tenance laws is set 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 sees parties attempt to obtain jurisdiction in Indiana to avoid onerous spousal maintenance 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 prop - erty, regardless of how titled or how or when 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 considered long temporally. While rumblings are heard that the spousal main - tenance issue will resurface, that is not antici - pated for 2025. 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 more than half-century history of Indi - ana’s divorce laws, there is not a huge appetite to tackle changing the statutory regime of what
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