By Indy Senior Advisor Care Team · September 9, 2026
An Indianapolis-area campus that charges an entrance fee of at least $25,000 answers to the Secretary of State's Securities Division, not the health department. Here is what that registration actually gets your family, and what it does not.
The $25,000 line that decides which rules apply
If you are touring campuses around Indianapolis and one of them asks for a large one-time payment before your mother moves in, the single most useful thing you can find out is whether that payment crosses $25,000. That number is not a marketing threshold. It is the line drawn in Indiana Code 23-2-4, the chapter that governs continuing care contracts, and it decides whether an entire body of financial-protection law applies to your family or does not.
The statute defines a continuing care agreement as an agreement to furnish a living unit, meals and related services, nursing care, medical services, other health-related services, or some combination of those, in exchange for an entrance fee of at least $25,000 plus periodic charges, for the life of the resident. A continuing care retirement community is defined to include both an independent living facility and a health facility licensed under IC 16-28. Put those two definitions together and you get the Indiana version of what the industry calls a CCRC or a Life Plan Community.
Below that $25,000 threshold, the chapter simply does not reach. The one-time community fee or move-in fee that many standalone assisted living communities charge is not an entrance fee under this law, and paying it does not trigger any of the disclosure, escrow or guaranty-fund protections described below. This is the practical reason two campuses a few miles apart on the north side can look similar on a tour and sit under completely different financial oversight. Our page on CCRCs versus standalone assisted living covers the care-model difference; this is the money difference.
Why a securities regulator, of all people
Families are often surprised by which agency is on the other end of this. Registration is not with the Indiana Department of Health. It is with the securities commissioner, defined in the chapter by reference to IC 23-19-6-1(a), which means the Securities Division in the Office of the Indiana Secretary of State. Their office is a few blocks from the Statehouse at 302 W. Washington Street, Room E111, Indianapolis, and the main number is (317) 232-6681.
The logic holds up once you say it plainly. When a family hands over a six-figure sum today in exchange for a promise of housing and care that may not be called on for fifteen years, the question that matters is whether the organization holding the money will still be solvent when the promise comes due. That is a financial disclosure problem of exactly the kind securities regulators were built to handle. It is not a nursing question.
The health-side questions are regulated separately and by someone else. The assisted living building on a CCRC campus is still licensed as a Residential Care Facility, and the skilled nursing building is still licensed as a comprehensive care facility, both through the Indiana Department of Health. Our guide to how Indiana licenses assisted living walks through that side. A community can be in perfect standing with the Securities Division and still have a troubled survey history, or the reverse. You have to check both.
Registration is required before the community opens if the provider enters into, extends, or solicits a continuing care agreement, and it is also required once an operating community has continuing care agreements with at least twenty-five percent of the people living there. The initial filing fee is $250 and the annual renewal is $100. The commissioner has sixty days to enter an order registering or rejecting the provider.
The document you are entitled to before you write a check
The centerpiece of the whole scheme is the disclosure statement. Under IC 23-2-4-7, the provider must deliver a copy of the initial disclosure statement and the latest annual disclosure statement to both the prospective resident and the contracting party before the continuing care agreement is executed, and the Securities Division's own published guidance goes further, telling communities to deliver the current statement before collecting any fees at all.
IC 23-2-4-4 sets out what has to be in it, and the list is more revealing than families expect. It includes the names of anyone holding a five percent or greater ownership interest in the provider or in the manager of the community. It includes a statement of whether the provider or any of its officers or directors, within the previous ten years, was convicted of a crime, lost a civil action for fraud or misappropriation, went through bankruptcy or was found insolvent, or had a health-care-related license or permit suspended or revoked. It includes every other community the provider or manager runs or has run.
Two items on that list deserve to be read first. Item eight requires the provider to state whether it is affiliated with a religious, charitable or other nonprofit organization, and the extent to which that affiliate is actually responsible for the provider's financial and contractual obligations. Families routinely assume a familiar denominational name on the sign means the parent organization stands behind the contract. Sometimes it does. The disclosure statement is where that gets answered in writing rather than at a tour.
Item ten requires a description of the terms and conditions under which the agreement can be cancelled or fees refunded. Alongside it, item nine requires a description of all services and all fees, including the conditions under which those fees may be adjusted. And item eleven requires audited financial statements prepared under generally accepted accounting principles: a balance sheet as of the end of the last fiscal year and income statements for the last three. Providers file an updated version annually, within four months of their fiscal year end. Ask for both the initial statement and the most recent annual one, and ask in writing. If you want a broader checklist of what any Indiana community owes you on paper, we covered that in what an Indiana contract is legally required to tell you.
Where your money sits before your parent moves in
IC 23-2-4-10 requires, as a condition of registration, that entrance fees collected before the resident is permitted to occupy the unit go into an interest-bearing escrow account with a bank, trust company or other escrow agent approved by the commissioner. When the money comes back out depends entirely on whether the unit has been lived in before.
If the entrance fee buys a previously occupied unit, the fee and the interest on it are released to the provider when the new resident first occupies it. If it buys a unit nobody has ever lived in, the bar is considerably higher. The commissioner has to be satisfied that entrance fees received or receivable under signed agreements, plus anticipated proceeds of long-term financing, plus funds actually in the provider's possession, together equal at least fifty percent of the aggregate cost of constructing, purchasing, equipping and furnishing the community, and at least fifty percent of the estimated funds needed to cover its startup losses. A permanent financing commitment has to be in hand as well.
Here is the provision almost nobody mentions on a sales tour. Under IC 23-2-4-10(d), an entrance fee sitting in escrow has to be returned to the person who paid it at that person's election, at any time before the fee is released to the provider. If a family put down a deposit on a building that is running two years behind schedule, that is not merely a matter of goodwill negotiation. It is a statutory right for as long as the money is still in escrow.
Two caveats worth raising directly with the community. First, IC 23-2-4-11 lets a provider substitute a letter of credit, negotiable securities, or a surety bond for the escrow account, with the commissioner's permission, so ask which arrangement is actually in place and who holds it. Second, IC 23-2-4-12 restricts how the money can be spent: entrance fees for a community constructed or purchased after August 31, 1982 may be used only for purposes directly related to that particular community, not to fund the operator's next campus somewhere else.
The guaranty fund, and why it is smaller than it sounds
Indiana created the Indiana Retirement Home Guaranty Fund in 1982 under IC 23-2-4-13, specifically to protect residents if a provider goes bankrupt. It is held in trust in a segregated account and invested by the Treasurer of State, and it is overseen by a board of six: a provider representative, two resident representatives, one member with insurance expertise and one with banking and finance expertise, all appointed by the Governor, plus the Securities Commissioner serving ex officio.
It is a genuine protection and it is worth knowing about. It is also worth understanding honestly, because the way it is funded surprises people. The fund was built from a one-time $100 fee levied on each contracting party who signed a continuing care agreement after August 31, 1982 and before July 1, 2009. That levy ended. No new resident has paid into the fund in more than fifteen years, and the Division states that the fund and its board will continue to exist only as long as at least one resident who paid in is still receiving services under an agreement.
What it pays out is bounded too. If a community goes bankrupt and its operation is terminated, the board may distribute to living residents, subject to the commissioner's approval, an aggregate amount not exceeding one-half of the money in the fund at the time of disbursement. Each resident's share is prorated against the total paid on their behalf, and no resident can receive more than what was paid less the value of services already received.
One piece of good news inside that: eligibility does not depend on having contributed. IC 23-2-4-16(b) says any living resident of the community is eligible for a distribution regardless of whether a contribution was ever made on their behalf. So someone signing an agreement in 2026 is not shut out. They are simply sharing a finite pool that stopped taking in new fees in 2009. Treat the fund as a partial backstop, not as insurance on your entrance fee. The real protection in this statute is the audited financial statement you are entitled to read before you sign.
What the law does when a provider ignores it
The commissioner has real levers under IC 23-2-4-8. Registration can be denied, revoked or refused renewal, or the provider can be barred from signing new continuing care agreements, for willfully violating the chapter, for failing to file the required annual disclosure statement, or for failing to deliver disclosure statements to a prospective resident. Notably, that section also reaches a provider who handed over a disclosure statement containing a material misstatement or omission even if it had no actual knowledge of the error at the time. The commissioner can also summarily prohibit new agreements while a proceeding is pending.
Beyond that, IC 23-2-4-9 makes a knowing or intentional failure to comply with the registration and disclosure sections a Class A infraction. And if the commissioner has reason to believe a community is insolvent, IC 23-2-4-21 allows a petition for the appointment of a receiver to take over management and possession, filed either in the county where the community sits or in the Marion County courts.
There is also a private remedy, which matters more to an individual family. Under IC 23-2-4-20, a provider that signs a continuing care agreement without registering, or without first delivering the required disclosure statements, or that delivers a statement containing an untrue or misleading statement of material fact, is liable to the person who signed for repayment of entrance fees, application fees, periodic charges and other fees paid, less the reasonable value of the care and lodging actually provided, plus interest at the legal rate for judgments, costs and reasonable attorney's fees. Liability attaches only where the provider knew or, exercising reasonable care, should have known of the problem, and an action generally has to be brought within two years.
None of that is legal advice, and this is exactly the kind of decision where an Indiana elder law attorney earns their fee before you sign rather than after. But knowing the remedy exists changes how a family reads a contract.
What to actually do before you sign
Ask the community directly whether it is registered as a continuing care retirement community with the Indiana Securities Division. If the entrance fee is at or above $25,000 and the answer is no, or vague, that is the conversation to have before any other one. You can also check the Division's public registration search and its administrative actions search yourself, and its general guidance for families lives at securities.sos.in.gov.
Then ask for the initial disclosure statement and the most recent annual disclosure statement, and get them before any money changes hands. Ask whether the entrance fee will be escrowed or covered by a bond or letter of credit, and who holds it. If the unit has not been built or occupied yet, ask specifically what conditions remain before that escrow releases. Take the audited financial statements to your own CPA or financial planner rather than reading them alone at the kitchen table.
Finally, run the health-side check separately, because the Securities Division does not evaluate quality of care. Our guide on verifying a facility license covers that, and if a concern is about care rather than money, the right route is the long-term care ombudsman or the Department of Health, described on our page about the ombudsman and filing complaints. For how entrance-fee campuses fit alongside every other way families cover this, see how families pay for senior care.
An entrance fee is one of the largest checks most families ever write, and it buys a promise rather than a deed. Indiana built a paper trail specifically so that promise can be examined before the check clears. The documents exist. Ask for them.
