How to Look Up an Indiana Business (or Person) in Public Records
Before you sign a contract, lend money, rent to someone, or trust a company with a big job, you can learn a surprising amount for free — all of it from official Indiana public records. Here’s where to look and, just as importantly, how to read what you find without jumping to conclusions.
Business registration — INBiz (Secretary of State)
inbiz.in.gov is Indiana’s official business portal. Search a company name to find:
- Whether the business is actually registered, and its current status (active vs. dissolved or administratively closed).
- The registration date — useful for sanity-checking “family owned since 1985” claims.
- The registered agent and principal office address.
A clean registration doesn’t prove a company is good — it just proves it exists and did the paperwork. A dissolved status, or a business that isn’t registered at all while operating like one, is worth asking about.
Court records — MyCase
public.courts.in.gov/mycase is the state’s public case search. Search a business or a person’s name to see civil and, where public, criminal case history.
- What it’s good for: spotting a pattern — repeated collections cases, evictions, unpaid-contractor lawsuits, or fraud claims.
- How to read it responsibly: one case proves nothing. People and businesses get sued for all kinds of reasons, and being named in a case isn’t a verdict. Look for volume and repetition, and read the actual disposition rather than assuming.
Professional licenses — IPLA
The Indiana Professional Licensing Agency (in.gov/pla) lets you verify licenses for regulated professions — contractors in licensed trades, cosmetologists, real-estate agents, health professionals, and more. Confirm the license is current and matches the name you were given.
Property records — county assessor & recorder
Each county’s assessor and recorder offices (searchable online in most counties) show property ownership, sale history, and recorded liens. This can confirm whether the person you’re dealing with actually owns the property in question, and whether there are liens against it.
Consumer complaints — Attorney General & BBB
- The Indiana Attorney General (in.gov/attorneygeneral) takes and publishes consumer-protection actions and lets you file complaints.
- The Better Business Bureau aggregates complaints and how a business responded — the response often tells you more than the complaint.
How to put it together
No single record tells the whole story. The goal isn’t to play detective — it’s to cross-check the story you’re being told against the public paper trail. When the registration, licenses, reviews, and court history all line up with what someone claims, that’s reassuring. When they don’t — when the “20-year business” is a six-month-old LLC with three collections cases — you’ve just saved yourself a very expensive lesson, for free.
This is exactly the kind of consumer-education legwork our Indiana Businesses Exposed division is about: not gossip, just the public facts, and how to read them fairly.