Judgment liens in Indiana
In Indiana a money judgment becomes a lien on land through one act in one county, and the clock that kills it does not start where you would expect. This page covers Indiana, and nobody writing it is a lawyer. None of it is advice on your case.
What to file, and where
A attaches when the judgment is entered and indexed in the county's judgment , and not before.
A final judgment for money or costs from a circuit court or other Indiana court of record of general original jurisdiction, state or federal, is a lien on real estate and chattels real liable to execution in the county where it was entered and indexed in the judgment docket. The lien exists from the time the judgment was entered and indexed, which IC 34-55-9-21 sets out. Two acts in one breath: entered, and indexed.
That docket is not a private file. Open to public inspection at the clerk's office during regular hours, the judgment docket under IC 33-32-3-2(g)2 must also be searchable when kept electronically, so a member of the public can look up a party's name and pull every judgment in the docket against that party. So the lien that decides is the same record anybody can read.
A map of the United States with Indiana highlighted and labeled as a docketing state: a judgment becomes a lien when it is entered and indexed in the county clerk's judgment docket. Every other state is drawn as not shown.
What it reaches
Real estate and chattels real that are liable to execution are what the lien catches, and the statute spells them out item by item.
IC 34-55-9-13 lists the land liable to all judgments and attachments and salable on execution: all of the debtor's lands in possession, remainder or reversion; rights of redeeming mortgaged lands and lands held by land office certificate; lands or interests held in trust for or to the use of another; and all chattels real of the debtor. Of that list, IC 34-55-9-2 reaches the real estate and chattels real that are liable to execution.
Liable to execution is doing work in that phrase. Some property is carved out as exempt. Item (2) of the exempt property in IC 34-55-10-2(c)4 is other real estate or tangible personal property of $8,000, and under IC 34-55-10-2(b) that amount holds until the department of financial institutions adopts a rule under section 2.5 of the chapter. What the rule sets after that is not written in the section a reader can check.
How long it lasts, and renewing it
Ten years, measured from a date that is not the date the lien attached.
The lien lasts until ten years after the judgment was rendered. Excluded from the count under IC 34-55-9-2 is any time the party was restrained from proceeding on the lien by an appeal, an injunction, the death of the defendant, or an agreement of the parties entered of record. Read the two dates together and the trap appears. An Indiana lien attaches when the judgment is entered and indexed, but the ten years run from rendition, which can be an earlier day.
Whether an Indiana judgment lien can be extended or renewed past that ten years, and by what act, is a question the section does not answer, and this page will not guess at it. Duration and renewal differ enough state to state that the general duration and renewal page is the better place to see how other states handle the same clock.
Land in another county
County by county, a judgment reaches land elsewhere only once it is entered on that county's docket.
Under IC 34-55-9-2 the lien sits in the county where the judgment was entered and indexed in the judgment docket. To put a judgment on a circuit court's docket, IC 33-32-3-2(f) lets anyone interested in a money or costs judgment from any Indiana state court, or any federal court of general original jurisdiction sitting in Indiana, file with the clerk either a verified statement of the required facts or a verified copy certified under the rendering court's seal.
Once that is filed, IC 33-32-3-2(d) tells the clerk to enter and index it alphabetically, showing the parties, the court, the cause number, the book and page where the judgment is recorded, the date it is entered and indexed, the date of rendition, and the amounts of the judgment and costs. Rendition rides along on the docket entry, which matters because that is the date the ten-year clock has been counting from all along.
Homestead here, in one paragraph
Indiana exempts the residence by dollar value, and the dollar value in the section is not the one a creditor should treat as final.
A debtor domiciled in Indiana exempts, under IC 34-55-10-2(c)(1), the real estate or personal property that is the personal or family residence of the debtor or a dependent, or estates or rights in it, of not more than $15,000. That figure applies under IC 34-55-10-2(b) until the department of financial institutions adopts a rule under section 2.5, and the rule itself is not something this page can read, so the amount in force is not stated here either. For joint debtors holding as tenants by the entireties, the exemption is available to each of them individually.
This exemption is not absolute. Real estate or personal property on which the debtor voluntarily granted a lien falls outside the exemption chapter under IC 34-55-10-2(e), to the extent of the balance due on the secured debt, so a the debtor signed is not shut out by the residence exemption. Indiana's figures and the entireties point sit alongside the rest in the homestead survey.
Where the records live
A clerk's judgment docket is both the record that creates the lien and the record the public can search.
A lien here is a creature of the judgment docket in each county, under IC 34-55-9-2. That same docket stays open for public inspection at the clerk's office during regular hours under IC 33-32-3-2(g), and an electronic docket must be searchable by a party's name to return every judgment against that party. So the office to ask is the clerk, and the question is whether the judgment has been entered and indexed there.
Which act makes a judgment a lien varies by state, and Indiana's docketing answer is one square on a larger board. Set against the rest, it appears on the state-by-state map.
Sources
Every section named above, with how current the text we read was. Read any of them yourself.
- IC 34-55-9-2, Civil Law and Procedure § 34-55-9-2. Read the section, opens in a new tab Back
- IC 33-32-3-2, Courts and Court Officers § 33-32-3-2. Read the section, opens in a new tab Back
- IC 34-55-9-1, Civil Law and Procedure § 34-55-9-1. Read the section, opens in a new tab Back
- IC 34-55-10-2, Civil Law and Procedure § 34-55-10-2. Read the section, opens in a new tab Back