Ind. Code § 32-17-3-1

Husband and wife purchase or lease of real estate; rights of survivor

Applied in 3 court decisions — leading case Cheryl L. Underwood v. Thomas Bunger, in his capacity as the Personal Representative of The Estate of Kenneth K. Kinney Judith M. Fulford and Sheree Demming (2016)

Most recently applied in Cheryl L. Underwood v. Thomas Bunger, in his capacity as the Personal Representative of The Estate of Kenneth K. Kinney Judith M. Fulford and Sheree Demming (March 2016)

As added by P.L.2-2002, SEC.2.

How often courts cite this section

citing decisions per year

Court decisions citing this, by year. The dip in the last several years is a data-coverage gap, not a real trend — our corpus holds fewer opinions from the most recent years, so recent citations are undercounted.

Sec. 1. (a) This section applies to a written contract in which a husband and wife:

(1) purchase real estate; or

(2) lease real estate with an option to purchase.

(b) Except as provided in subsection (d), a contract described in subsection (a) creates an estate by the entireties in the husband and wife. The interest of neither party is severable during the marriage.

(c) Upon the death of either party to the marriage, the survivor is considered to have owned the whole of all rights under the contract from its inception.

(d) If:

(1) a contract described in subsection (a) expressly creates a tenancy in common; or

(2) it appears from the tenor of a contract described in subsection (a) that the contract was intended to create a tenancy in common;

the contract shall be construed to create a tenancy in common.

Official source: Indiana General Assembly. Reproduced from public-domain Indiana statutes; confirm against the official source for the current text. Not legal advice.