Indiana Lien Waiver & Release — The No-Lien Contract Recorded Before You Mobilize (2026)
✓ Verified against Indiana statutes · Reviewed August 2026 · By Michael Evan — Founder · 50 states · 799 rules
Indiana mechanics lien deadlines at a glance
Preliminary Notice
None (comm) — Res: pre-lien notice
Mechanics Lien
60 days (res) / 90 (comm) — From last date of furnishing
Enforcement
1 year — From filing
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Two Statutes That Were Written to Fit Together
A lien waiver and release is the document a contractor, subcontractor, or supplier signs to give up lien rights in exchange for money. Indiana has one of those rules, and it is unremarkable — the protective line is payment, which is where most states draw it. What makes Indiana worth studying is the second instrument, which is not a waiver at all and which a claimant can be bound by without ever signing, seeing, or hearing about it. IC 32-28-3-16, titled Waiver of right to a lien voiding contract, supplies the ordinary rule. Subsection (b) makes void a provision in a contract for the improvement of real estate in Indiana that requires a person who furnishes labor, materials, or machinery to waive a right to a lien against real estate, or a claim against a payment bond, before the person is paid. Subsection (c) adds that a provision under which one or more persons agree not to file a notice of intention to hold a lien is void. Two rights, plus the procedural step that perfects them, all protected in one short section. Then read subsection (a). The section applies to contracts for the construction, alteration, or repair of a building or structure, excluding Class 2 structures and improvements auxiliary to them, and excluding regulated utility property. Hold that exclusion list next to IC 32-28-3-1(e), which authorizes an owner and principal contractor to stipulate that a lien may not attach, and the lists are the same. Indiana did not leave a gap by accident; it drew one statute's boundary along the other's.
The No-Lien Contract, a Waiver Nobody Downstream Signs
IC 32-28-3-1(e) permits a contract in four categories to include a provision or stipulation in the contract of the owner and principal contractor that a lien may not attach to the real estate, building, structure or any other improvement of the owner. The four are: construction, alteration, or repair of a Class 2 structure as defined in IC 22-12-1-5; the same work on an improvement auxiliary to a Class 2 structure on the same real estate; property owned, operated, managed, or controlled by a regulated public, municipal, cooperative, or not-for-profit utility and intended to be used and useful for producing, transmitting, delivering, or furnishing heat, light, water, telecommunications, or power to the public; and work to prepare property for Class 2 residential construction. A Class 2 structure under IC 22-12-1-5 is, in substance, residential: a building or structure containing only one or two dwelling units, a qualifying townhouse in a group of three or more attached units running foundation to roof at no more than three stories with rated separation walls and open space on at least two sides, and outbuildings such as garages, barns, and swimming pools, unless the structure is regularly used as a Class 1 structure. So the practical translation is that on Indiana one- and two-family residential work, townhouse work, site preparation for it, and regulated utility work, the owner can put a no-lien stipulation in the prime contract, and the protection of section 32-28-3-16 was never extended there in the first place. The unusual feature is who it binds. Every other instrument in this cluster is a document the claimant signs. This one lives between the owner and the principal contractor, and the subcontractor and supplier two and three tiers down are inside it without ever being asked.
The Five-Day Recording Rule Is the Claimant's Only Handle
IC 32-28-3-1(f) imposes four conditions on a no-lien contract. It must be in writing. It must contain a specific legal description of the real estate. It must be acknowledged as provided in the case of deeds. And it must be filed and recorded in the recorder's office of the county where the real estate sits not more than five days after the date of execution. Subsection (g) then requires the recorder to record it and index it under the names of both the contractor and the owner. Two consequences follow, and both are actionable rather than theoretical. First, the instrument is publicly searchable before you mobilize, indexed under two names a bidder already knows. On a Class 2 or utility project in Indiana, searching the county recorder for a no-lien contract belongs in the same pre-mobilization routine as confirming the record owner and the legal description. Second, and more valuable, subsection (f) provides that a contract containing a provision or stipulation described in subsection (e) does not affect a lien for labor, material, or machinery supplied before the filing of the contract with the recorder. The recorder's stamp, not the signature date, is the dividing line. Everything furnished before it keeps full lien rights. Because recording is due within five days of execution, that window is narrow on a well-run job and can be wide on a badly run one, and its size is proved by delivery tickets and daily reports rather than argued about.
How the Two Sections Apply, Scenario by Scenario
Read together, section 32-28-3-16 and section 32-28-3-1(e) through (g) produce seven outcomes depending on the structure class, the timing, and whether anything was recorded. A subcontract on an office, retail, industrial, or multifamily project requiring a waiver before payment is void under subsection 16(b). The same subcontract requiring waiver of the payment bond claim before payment is void as well, because 16(b)(2) names a claim against a payment bond alongside the lien. A clause under which the claimant agrees not to file a notice of intention to hold a lien is void under 16(c). A waiver signed after payment is received, on covered work, is outside the ban and governed by its own terms, because the statute voids the requirement to waive before the person is paid. A no-lien contract between owner and principal contractor on a one- or two-family home is permitted if recorded, under section 32-28-3-1(e)(1) and (f). A no-lien contract on regulated utility property is permitted if recorded, under (e)(3). And a no-lien contract recorded after the claimant already furnished labor or materials has no effect on that work, under (f). The structure class decides everything before any document is read. On Class 1 commercial work, Indiana gives a claimant a strong statutory floor: no pre-payment waiver, no bond-claim waiver, no agreement not to file. On Class 2 residential and regulated utility work, that floor is absent and a recorded no-lien contract is authorized.
What Protects an Indiana Claimant
An Indiana checklist starts one step earlier than most states'. Before any document is reviewed, the structure class has to be settled under IC 22-12-1-5 and IC 32-28-3-16(a), because it decides which of two opposite regimes the project sits in. The county recorder should be searched for a recorded no-lien contract, by owner name and by contractor name, under section 32-28-3-1(f) and (g). The first-furnishing date should be documented against the recorder's filing stamp. There should be no pre-payment waiver requirement in the subcontract on covered work under 16(b), and no agreement not to file a notice of intention to hold a lien under 16(c). The payment bond claim should be treated as a separately protected right under 16(b)(2). Any waiver should be dated after payment is received, with the payment identified. Then come the dates that end Indiana claims outright. The notice of intention to hold a lien is due under IC 32-28-3-3 within 90 days of performing labor or furnishing materials or machinery, shortened to 60 days on a Class 2 structure or an improvement auxiliary to one. The foreclosure complaint follows under IC 32-28-3-6 within one year after the statement is recorded or after any stated credit period expires, or the lien is void. And IC 32-28-3-9 supplies a separate personal-liability route against the owner on written notice, limited to what the owner still owes the principal contractor.
Generating and Tracking Indiana Documents
Because Indiana's rules fork on structure class and one of its instruments is recorded rather than signed, the protective work is classification and record-checking at the front of the job. The Mechanics Lien Management document tool captures the structure class on the project record so the 60-day and 90-day clocks and the applicable waiver regime are set from day one, stamps the first-furnishing date for comparison against any recorded no-lien contract, and states the identified payment and carve-outs on the face of each waiver. The Mechanics Lien Management State System calendars the notice and one-year foreclosure windows from the same record. The Indiana claimant who loses is rarely the one who signed a bad waiver — it is the one who never learned, until the money stopped, that a no-lien contract had been recorded in the county before the first delivery.
Frequently Asked Questions
Can lien rights be waived before payment in Indiana?
Not on the work IC 32-28-3-16 covers. Subsection (b) makes void a provision in a contract for the improvement of real estate in Indiana that requires a person who furnishes labor, materials, or machinery to waive a right to a lien against real estate, or a claim against a payment bond, before the person is paid. Indiana's protective line is payment. But subsection (a) limits the section's reach: it does not apply to Class 2 structures and improvements auxiliary to them, or to regulated utility property. On those two categories the protection does not exist at all.
What is an Indiana no-lien contract?
It is a provision in the contract between the owner and the principal contractor stating that a lien may not attach to the real estate, building, structure, or any other improvement of the owner. IC 32-28-3-1(e) authorizes it for four categories: construction, alteration, or repair of a Class 2 structure as defined in IC 22-12-1-5; the same work on an improvement auxiliary to a Class 2 structure on the same real estate; property owned, operated, managed, or controlled by a regulated public, municipal, cooperative, or not-for-profit utility and used for producing, transmitting, delivering, or furnishing heat, light, water, telecommunications, or power to the public; and work to prepare property for Class 2 residential construction. Nobody downstream signs it, and it binds them anyway.
How does an Indiana no-lien contract have to be recorded?
IC 32-28-3-1(f) sets four requirements. The contract must be in writing, must contain a specific legal description of the real estate, must be acknowledged as provided in the case of deeds, and must be filed and recorded in the recorder's office of the county in which the real estate is situated not more than five days after the date of execution. Under subsection (g) the recorder records it and indexes it under the names of both the contractor and the owner. A subcontractor or supplier checking for one therefore searches by owner name or by contractor name, not only by legal description.
Does an Indiana no-lien contract wipe out work already performed?
No, and this is the single most useful sentence in the section for a claimant. IC 32-28-3-1(f) provides that a contract containing a provision or stipulation described in subsection (e) does not affect a lien for labor, material, or machinery supplied before the filing of the contract with the recorder. The date stamped by the recorder is the dividing line. Everything a claimant furnished before that stamp retains full lien rights; everything after it is inside the no-lien provision. Because the contract must be recorded within five days of execution, a late-recorded no-lien contract leaves a gap, and the size of that gap is a question of dates rather than argument.
Does Indiana's waiver ban cover payment bond claims?
Yes. IC 32-28-3-16(b) voids a provision requiring a person to waive a right to a lien against real estate or a claim against a payment bond before the person is paid. Naming both matters because on public projects and bonded private work the bond is the real remedy and the lien is unavailable or secondary. A statute that protected only the lien would leave the bond claim freely waivable at the first draw, which is exactly how the protection gets hollowed out in states that named only the lien. Indiana closed that route in the same sentence.
Can an Indiana contract require you to agree not to file a lien notice?
No. IC 32-28-3-16(c) provides that a provision in a contract for the improvement of real estate in Indiana under which one or more persons agree not to file a notice of intention to hold a lien is void. That subsection closes the obvious workaround to (b). A promise not to file the notice is not, on its face, a waiver of the lien right, but in practice it destroys the right just as effectively, because the recorded notice of intention to hold a lien is how an Indiana lien is perfected in the first place. Subsection (c) treats the promise not to file as the equivalent of the waiver.
What Indiana lien deadlines sit alongside a waiver?
Two, and they split by structure class the same way the waiver rules do. Under IC 32-28-3-3 the notice of intention to hold a lien must be recorded in the recorder's office not later than 90 days after performing labor or furnishing materials or machinery on other property, and not later than 60 days on a Class 2 structure or an improvement auxiliary to one. Under IC 32-28-3-6 an action to foreclose must be filed not later than one year after the statement is recorded, or after the expiration of any credit period stated in the notice, or the lien is void. A claimant who defeats a waiver and misses the 60 or 90 days has nothing left.