More on Indiana

The rest of what we have written about Indiana. Every figure is quoted from Indiana’s own statute or its courts’ own published schedule, and carries the date we last checked it.

Changing your name back in Indiana

Whether you can get your former name back in the divorce itself — and what it costs in Indiana if you miss that moment.

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The federal half is the same everywhere

Social Security, the passport, and the order to do them in are identical in all fifty states and are on the main name-change page. This page is the part that is Indiana-specific.

Restore it in the divorceYesInd. Code § 31-15-2-18
After the decree is finalYes separate statutory name-change petition
Newspaper publicationRequired Yes. Ind. Code § 34-28-2-3 requires the notice to be published three times in a newspaper…
Background checkNo No fingerprinting and no criminal history check of the petitioner. But Ind. Code §…
Separate petition feevaries by countySet locally, so the number depends on where you file. The state pages below name a county example where we could confirm one.
CourtCircuit Court of the county in… The petition is ‘filed with the circuit court of the county in which the person resides’…

Restoring your name in the divorce

Indiana restores a former name through the divorce itself, under Ind. Code § 31-15-2-18.

SECTION NUMBER CONFIRMED, OPERATIVE TEXT not VERIFIED FROM A PRIMARY SOURCE. IC 31-15-2-18 is listed as a current provision on the Indiana General Assembly’s own Title 31 Derivation Table (current provision 31-15-2-18, derived from former 31-1-11.5-18), and it sits in Article 15, Chapter 2 (Actions for Dissolution of Marriage). The Indiana General Assembly’s code pages and Title 31 PDF could not be made to return the section’s text, so the operative sentence is deliberately not paraphrased here rather than guessed. Non-primary indexes title the section ‘Name change of woman’, which suggests the statute is written in gendered terms – a reader should confirm the current text and whether it has been made gender-neutral before relying on it.

If the decree is already final

If the dissolution decree did not restore the name, the fallback is the full Chapter 34-28-2 petition in the circuit court of the county of residence, with three weeks of newspaper publication and a hearing. This is a real cost: the last publication must run at least 30 days before the hearing, so the process cannot be completed in under about two months.

Authority: Ind. Code § 34-28-2-1 et seq.

The separate name-change petition

This is the route if the divorce route is closed to you, or if you want a name that is not a former one.

  • Statute: Ind. Code § 34-28-2-1 et seq. (§ 34-28-2-1 authority; § 34-28-2-1.5 persons prohibited; § 34-28-2-2 petition and venue; § 34-28-2-2.5 required disclosures; § 34-28-2-3 publication)
  • Court: Circuit Court of the county in which the person resides (Ind. Code § 34-28-2-2)
  • Filing fee: varies by county – see notes
  • Residency: The petition is ‘filed with the circuit court of the county in which the person resides’ (Ind. Code § 34-28-2-2). No minimum duration of residency was located.
  • Publication: Yes. Ind. Code § 34-28-2-3 requires the notice to be published three times in a newspaper in the county, and ‘the last weekly publication shall be published not less than thirty (30) days before’ the hearing. The notice states the petitioner’s current name, the proposed name, the court, the filing date, and the right to object. Proof is filed with the court by a ‘Notice of Filing Proof of Publication’ with the published notice attached and ‘verified by the affidavit of a disinterested person.’ SAFETY EXEMPTION: no statutory exemption for domestic violence survivors. This has been litigated. In In re Name Change of Jane Doe, the Indiana Court of Appeals affirmed the denial of a petition brought by a mother seeking anonymous name changes for herself and her children to escape an abusive ex-partner, holding it could not override the publication requirement of IC 34-28-2-3, while suggesting that her ‘best option would have been to utilize Rule 9, specifically Rules 9(G) and (H)’ – the Administrative Rule governing access to court records – ‘to try to admit essential evidence into the record and perhaps effectuate the name changes anonymously.’ In practice, then, an Indiana survivor’s route is a Rule 9 motion to exclude records from public access and to proceed anonymously, not a statutory publication waiver.
  • Background check: No fingerprinting and no criminal history check of the petitioner. But Ind. Code § 34-28-2-2.5 requires a petitioner age 17 or older to submit a substantial identity dossier with the petition: date of birth, residence and mailing address, driver’s license or state ID number, ‘a list of all previous names used by the person,’ proof of United States citizenship, passport status, and ‘a description of all judgments of criminal conviction of a felony.’ Petitioners are told to bring their Indiana driver’s license or state ID to the hearing for verification. Ind. Code § 34-28-2-1.5 prohibits certain persons from changing their name (with a religious-belief exception), and a person who is a sex or violent offender required to register under IC 11-8-8 must so state.
  • Hearing: required

Official forms

What catches people out in Indiana

The publication timing is the trap: three weekly publications, and the LAST one must be at least 30 days before the hearing. File, publish, then set the hearing – not the other way round.
Indiana wants proof of U.S. citizenship with an adult name change petition (IC 34-28-2-2.5). This is unusual and catches lawful permanent residents by surprise.
You must list every previous name you have used and every felony conviction. Omissions are sworn-statement problems, not paperwork problems.
If safety is the concern, the route is an Administrative Rule 9 motion to prohibit public access, filed alongside the petition. Do not assume the court can simply waive publication – the Court of Appeals has held it cannot.
Worth knowing

Indiana has no domestic violence exemption from name-change publication, and the Court of Appeals has said so directly in In re Name Change of Jane Doe. This contradicts a lot of generic ‘most states let survivors skip publication’ advice.

The divorce name-restoration section (IC 31-15-2-18) is indexed under the title ‘Name change of woman’, which suggests gendered drafting. Its text we could not verified on a primary source, so it is recorded here as unverified rather than paraphrased.

The statutory text quoted for IC 34-28-2-2, -2.5, -3 and -4 was read from the Indiana General Assembly’s own engrossed House Bill 1047 (2010) plus an official county clerk form packet. Later amendments may exist; iga.in.gov’s current-code pages did not return section text to automated retrieval.

No statewide name-change filing fee could be verified from a primary source; Indiana civil filing fees are collected at the county clerk level. Left as ‘varies by county’ rather than guessed.

Sources for this page

Sources we could not reach when this page was built, listed so you know what was not checked rather than assuming it was: https://iga.in.gov/laws/2025/ic/titles/31 and https://iga.in.gov/ic/2025/Title_31.pdf (section text for IC 31-15-2-18 not returned); iga.in.gov current-code section pages for IC 34-28-2-1 through 34-28-2-4 (not retrievable; text taken from the Legislature’s engrossed HB 1047 (2010) instead)

Found an error? Tell us — it goes on the corrections page with the date and how long it was live.

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Sources last checked30 August 2026
Page published30 August 2026
What this means. This is when the sources on this page were last read against their originals — statutes, court rules, official schedules — taken from the date this page was built from its sources. It is not the date the page was last edited. Adding a link or fixing a typo does not move it; re-reading the statute does. Law changes without notice, so treat anything time-sensitive as needing a fresh check. Where we get something wrong we publish it at thecusp.app/corrections with the date, what changed, and how long the error was live.