Rent-to-Own Laws in Indiana: Your Rights

Indiana regulates rent-to-own through its Rental Purchase Agreements act (Ind. Code Article 24-7). It spells out what a store can charge, how repossession has to work, and the rights you keep when you fall behind. It also puts the legal risk on a store that breaks the rules, not on the customer.

Can I be arrested for not paying?

No, not for falling behind. The criminal offenses in Indiana’s act are aimed at the store, not the customer: it’s a Class C misdemeanor for a lessor to knowingly give false information, fail to make a required disclosure, or make an unauthorized or excessive charge (Ind. Code §§24-7-9-1 through 24-7-9-3). Missing payments is a civil matter. If a store violates the act and you’re harmed, you can recover the greater of your actual damages, $300, or 25% of the total rental payments needed to own the item, plus attorney’s fees and court costs (§24-7-9-4).

Can I be charged with theft for keeping the item?

This is a separate question, and Indiana has no specific failure-to-return crime for household goods. Its general criminal-conversion law makes it a Class A misdemeanor to knowingly exert unauthorized control over someone else’s property (Ind. Code §35-43-4-3). For a rent-to-own item, that generally means refusing to return it after the agreement has clearly ended, not simply being behind. The enhanced failure-to-return felony in that statute applies only to motor vehicles, and the older general failure-to-return presumption was repealed in 2019.

So the risk here is narrow and fact-specific. If you decide to walk away, returning the item is the clean way to end the matter.

Can the store come into my home?

No. A rental purchase agreement may not authorize the store, or anyone acting on its behalf, to unlawfully enter your premises or to commit any breach of the peace in repossessing the property (Ind. Code §24-7-4-6). A store that can’t repossess peacefully has to go through the courts.

Reinstatement after a missed payment

If you miss a payment, you have a real right to get back on track. You can reinstate the original agreement on its original terms, without losing any rights or options you’d earned, and without extra charges beyond what the law allows, as long as you surrender the property within 7 days of the store’s request and reinstate within 120 days after surrendering it (Ind. Code §24-7-6-1). When you reinstate, the store has to give you back the same item or a comparable substitute (§24-7-6-3).

The cost to reinstate is limited: any accrued rental payments, returned-payment and delinquency charges, redelivery charges if redelivery is needed, and a reinstatement fee of no more than $5, which can only be charged once the item has actually been returned to the store (§§24-7-5-6, 24-7-6-2).

Buying it, or returning it

You own the property once you’ve made all the rental payments needed to acquire it, or you can use an early purchase option to acquire ownership at any time after the agreement is signed, on the terms your contract has to state (Ind. Code §24-7-4-1). A store can’t make you pay more than the cost to acquire ownership stated in your agreement (§24-7-4-11). The ownership calculator can help you see how close you are.

If you’d rather stop, a store may not charge a penalty for ending the agreement early or for returning the item at any point, and it can’t make you buy insurance from the store (§24-7-4-12). Because the agreement renews one term at a time, returning the item ends future payments.