How to Fight a Mechanics Lien Filed Against Your Indianapolis Property
Most guides explain how contractors file liens. This one walks Marion County property owners through the deadlines, defects, and bonding-off options that can get a lien off your title — and off you…
Most guides explain how contractors file liens. This one walks Marion County property owners through the deadlines, defects, and bonding-off options that can get a lien off your title — and off your back.
A mechanics lien showing up on your property title is one of those situations where doing nothing feels easier than figuring out what to do. The recorded document looks official. The dollar amount is alarming. And most of what you find online is written for contractors, not owners.
This guide is for the other side of that transaction: Indianapolis homeowners and commercial property owners in Marion County who have a lien on their property and want to understand their options before writing a check or panicking.
The short version: Indiana law gives property owners real tools. Contractors face strict filing and enforcement deadlines that, when missed, can void a lien entirely. Many liens filed in Marion County contain procedural defects that make them unenforceable. And Indiana’s bonding-off statute gives owners a fast, clean way to clear their title while the underlying dispute is still being sorted out. You don’t have to accept the lien as the final word.
Start Here — Confirm the Lien Is Actually on Your Title
Before you respond to anything, pull the actual recorded document. Contractors sometimes send preliminary lien notices or threats that haven’t been filed with the county at all. Know what you’re actually dealing with.
Marion County property records are searchable through the Marion County Recorder’s online portal at recorder.indy.gov. Search by property address or parcel number, look under “recorded documents,” and filter for mechanics liens or construction liens. What you’re looking for is a recorded instrument with a document number, a recording date stamped by the Recorder’s office, the lienholder’s name, the amount claimed, and a legal description of your property.
If you prefer to search in person, the Recorder’s office is at 200 E. Washington St., Suite 722, in the City-County Building. Staff can assist with document lookup during business hours.
Once you have the document, write down two dates: the recording date and any date the lien identifies as the contractor’s last day of work. Those two dates govern every deadline that follows. The recording date controls how much time you have — and, more importantly, how much time the contractor has left.
The Two Deadlines That Give You Real Options
Indiana’s mechanics lien statute, IC 32-28-3, creates two sequential deadlines. They’re the property owner’s most important strategic points.
The first is the 90-day filing deadline. A contractor, subcontractor, or supplier must record their lien within 90 days of the last date they furnished labor or materials to the project. This is a hard deadline. A lien filed on day 91 isn’t a late lien — it’s void. The clock runs from the claimant’s own last day of contribution, not from the project’s completion date or when they sent an invoice. Compare the lien’s claimed last-work date against its recording date. More than 90 days between them? You have a straightforward ground to challenge the lien’s validity.
The second deadline is less obvious but more consequential. Recording the lien doesn’t mean the contractor can sit on it indefinitely. Under IC 32-28-3-6, the lienholder must file a foreclosure action in court within one year of the date the lien was recorded. Miss that deadline and the lien expires — not just weakened, but gone.
Here’s what bothers me about this second deadline: it’s the one most Indianapolis property owners don’t know about. Some contractors count on that. If you discover a lien recorded more than a year ago and find no corresponding court case, you may already have an expired lien on your title and nobody told you. That means the contractor has lost their legal right to foreclose. You can take affirmative steps to have the lien formally released. Knowing your rights is exactly the kind of situation covered in our legal & finance coverage.
Is the Lien Already Defective?
Not every recorded lien is a valid one. Walk through this checklist against the document you pulled from the Recorder.
Late filing. If the recording date is more than 90 days after the last date of work stated in the lien, the filing was untimely. Courts have consistently held this fatal to the lien’s validity.
Incorrect legal description. The lien must identify the property with sufficient specificity, using the legal description as it appears in county records. A mismatch between the lien’s description and your property’s actual legal description is a basis for challenge.
Wrong entity name. The lienholder must be correctly identified. If the contractor operated as an LLC but filed the lien in an individual’s name — or vice versa — that’s challengeable. Out-of-state contractors in particular get this wrong when filing in Indiana.
Inflated claim amount. A mechanics lien can only cover the fair value of labor and materials actually furnished to your specific property. If the number looks wrong relative to what was actually done, that’s worth scrutinizing.
Missing preliminary notice. Subcontractors and suppliers who had no direct contract with the property owner must, under IC 32-28-3-1, provide preliminary notice to the owner to preserve their lien rights. Failure to provide that notice — or providing it late — defeats a subcontractor lien even if the filing itself was timely.
Finally, check whether the enforcement deadline has already passed. Look up the recording date, then check Indiana’s mycase.in.gov portal to see whether the lienholder filed any civil action involving your property address. Lien more than a year old, no foreclosure action on file? It may already be expired, just sitting there uncleaned from your title history.
On out-of-state contractors specifically: Indiana’s requirements are specific enough that companies headquartered in Ohio, Illinois, or elsewhere regularly file liens in Marion County with procedural errors they’d have avoided with local counsel. If a national home-services company or a large commercial GC with headquarters elsewhere filed your lien, have a local attorney review the document carefully.
Your Fastest Option — Bonding Off the Lien
If you have a pending sale, a construction draw scheduled, or a refinance in process, you can’t wait for the underlying dispute to resolve before clearing the lien from your title. Indiana’s substitution-of-bond procedure under IC 32-28-3-11 exists for exactly this situation.
You obtain a surety bond from a licensed surety company in the amount of 1.5 times the lien claim. A $40,000 lien requires a $60,000 bond. You then file a petition with Marion Superior Court — not the Recorder’s office — to substitute the bond for the lien. Once the court approves, the lien is released from your title. The dispute over whether the contractor is owed money continues, but it continues against the bond, not against your real estate.
Your title is clear. Your sale or refinance moves forward. The contractor’s claim isn’t extinguished; if they win in court, they collect from the surety. But your property is no longer the collateral, and that’s the whole point.
Surety bond premiums for Indiana mechanics lien bonds generally run 1% to 3% of the bond amount for applicants with acceptable credit — on a $60,000 bond, somewhere between $600 and $1,800, paid once for the life of the bond. Applicants with poor credit or disputed commercial projects may pay more. Compared to the financial exposure the lien represents, it’s often the cheapest resolution available. The surety company issues the bond; you’ll need an attorney to file the court petition. The Indiana Department of Insurance maintains a list of licensed surety providers at idoi.in.gov.
This option becomes urgent the moment a title company flags the lien as an exception to your title insurance commitment, a construction lender freezes a draw because of it, or you’re within 30 to 60 days of a closing. Don’t wait if you have a hard deadline.
When the Lien Has Already Expired — Getting It Off Your Title Without a Bond
If the contractor recorded their lien more than a year ago and never filed a foreclosure action, the lien is legally dead. But legally dead and removed from your title are not the same thing. The recorded document sits in the Recorder’s index indefinitely, showing up in every title search, until someone does something about it.
The path forward is a petition to Marion Superior Court for an order releasing the lien. Once the one-year enforcement window closes without a foreclosure filing, the lienholder has no valid grounds to oppose the release. You file, serve the lienholder, and — assuming they don’t appear, which they have no basis to do if the deadline has passed — the court issues a release order. You record that order with the Marion County Recorder and the lien is gone.
No surety bond required. That makes this meaningfully cheaper than bonding off an active lien. If the lienholder was an individual contractor who’s since gone out of business or can’t be located, you may need to pursue alternative service, which your attorney can navigate.
Where Things Actually Happen in Marion County
Marion Superior Court Civil Division — 200 E. Washington St., Indianapolis, IN 46204. This is the venue for mechanics lien foreclosure actions, petitions to discharge a lien, and substitution-of-bond proceedings. Civil filings can also be initiated through Indiana’s e-filing portal for represented parties.
Marion County Recorder’s Office — 200 E. Washington St., Suite 722, Indianapolis, IN 46204. Phone: (317) 327-4020. Online: recorder.indy.gov. This is where liens are recorded, where you pull the lien document, and where court orders releasing liens get recorded once obtained. The Recorder doesn’t resolve disputes — that’s the court’s job — but the Recorder’s index is what title companies and lenders check, so recording the release order here is the final practical step.
Indiana mycase.in.gov — The statewide public case portal. Search by party name or case number to find any active or historical litigation tied to the lienholder or your property address. This is how you verify whether a foreclosure action was filed within the one-year window, or confirm that it wasn’t.
What Happens If You Ignore the Lien
Mechanics liens don’t go away on their own within the enforcement window. If the contractor files a foreclosure action before that year expires, the stakes get serious fast.
In a mechanics lien foreclosure, the contractor sues in Marion Superior Court seeking a judgment and an order of foreclosure against your property. If they prevail, the court can order a sheriff’s sale of the property to satisfy the judgment. That’s not a metaphor. It’s a court-ordered auction of your real estate.
Indiana’s homestead exemption doesn’t protect residential property from mechanics lien foreclosure the way it protects against some other types of judgment creditors. Courts have consistently held that mechanics liens — specifically tied to improvements made to the property — fall outside that protection. If a contractor gets a mechanics lien judgment against your Indianapolis home, your home is genuinely at risk. Understanding what the Indiana homestead exemption does and does not cover is worth knowing before a dispute reaches that stage.
The worst version of this story is entirely avoidable, but only if you engage with the process before the enforcement clock runs out.
When to Stop DIY and Call an Attorney
Some lien situations are manageable with careful reading of the statute and a few hours of research. Many aren’t.
An active foreclosure filing changes everything. Once a lawsuit is pending in Marion Superior Court, you’re a defendant in litigation. The deadlines for responding to a complaint are short, and a missed deadline means a default judgment — immediate and hard to undo. Get an attorney.
A subcontractor lien adds complexity that individual property owners rarely navigate well. When the lien was filed by someone with whom you had no direct contract, the contractor-owner relationship, the notice requirements specific to subs, and any claims against the general contractor all need to be sorted out. The legal strategy differs meaningfully from fighting a direct-contractor lien.
Multiple lien claimants on the same project — common on larger renovation jobs and commercial work — require analysis of claim priority, adequacy of project funds, and whether bonding off some claims but not others makes strategic sense.
Large lien amounts warrant professional representation. The cost of an attorney is almost always justified by the financial exposure.
For representation in Indianapolis, contact the Indianapolis Bar Association Lawyer Referral Service at (317) 269-2222. For income-qualified residents, Indiana Legal Services at (317) 631-9410 provides free civil legal assistance and can help with lien disputes that threaten housing stability.
Sidebar: Indiana Mechanics Lien Timeline at a Glance
Last day of work on the project Verify this date against any lien notice received. If a lien is later recorded with a false last-work date to extend the 90-day window, that’s a basis for challenge.
90 days after last day of work → Lien filing deadline No lien recorded within 90 days? The contractor has lost their lien rights entirely. Lien recorded within this window? Check whether the filing was actually timely. A late filing is void.
Lien recorded with Marion County Recorder The one-year enforcement clock starts here — not from the last day of work. Owner’s immediate options: Review the document for defects; bond off the lien under IC 32-28-3-11; or negotiate a release directly.
1 year after recording date → Enforcement deadline The contractor must file a foreclosure action in Marion Superior Court before this date. If they do: Respond to the lawsuit. Do not ignore a filed complaint. If they don’t: Petition Marion Superior Court for a formal release and record the order with the Recorder.
Lien expires if no foreclosure filed An expired lien still needs a court order to come off your title. Petition Marion Superior Court; no bond required; record the release order with the Recorder when you have it.
The lien on your property is a problem with a legal solution — but the law only helps you if you use it. Check the deadlines. Read the document for defects. If you’re not sure where to start, pull the lien from the Marion County Recorder’s portal and write down the recording date. Everything else follows from there.
