A plain-language guide to farm leases, agricultural contracts, business entities, estate planning, and farm succession under Indiana law.

For most families in west-central Indiana, the farm is two things at once: a working business and a legacy meant to outlast the people running it. Both of those things live or die on the strength of the legal documents behind them — the lease that governs who works the ground, the deed that decides who inherits it, and the entity that shields the family’s other assets when something goes wrong.

Agricultural law (often called “ag law”) is the branch of law that deals with these issues as they arise on and around the farm. An Indiana agricultural law attorney helps farm owners, tenants, and families in Tippecanoe County (Lafayette and West Lafayette), Montgomery County (Crawfordsville), and surrounding counties such as Clinton, Warren, Fountain, Carroll, Benton, White, Boone, and Parke put the right documents in place before problems start — and untangle them when they do.

This article explains, in accessible terms, the areas where an ag law attorney is most useful and how Indiana law shapes each one. It is general educational information, not legal advice (see the disclaimer at the end).

What Does an Agricultural Law Attorney Actually Do?

Ag law is not a single statute; it is a collection of legal fields applied to farming. A farm attorney routinely works across:

• Farm leases — the agreements that let one party farm another’s land.
• Agricultural contracts — grain sales, equipment, custom farming, and input supply.
• Business entities — LLCs, corporations, and partnerships that hold and operate the farm.
• Estate planning — wills, trusts, and deeds that pass the farm to the next generation.
• Farm succession planning — the long-term plan for handing the operation down within the family.

The sections below walk through each area, define the key terms, and give concrete examples.

What You Should Know About Farm Leases in Indiana

A farm lease is a contract in which the landowner (the landlord) lets someone else (the tenant) use farmland, usually in exchange for rent. Farm leases are among the most common — and most commonly misunderstood — agreements in Indiana agriculture.

Get Everything in Writing

Many Indiana farm leases are still sealed with a handshake. That works until it doesn’t. Indiana’s Statute of Frauds — the law that requires certain agreements to be in writing to be enforceable — does not reach a lease “for a term of not more than three (3) years.” 

But a lease longer than three years is treated as a conveyance of an interest in land that must be in writing, signed by the landlord, and formally acknowledged (notarized). The practical takeaway: a multi-year farm lease that is not properly written and signed may be unenforceable.

Key term — Statute of Frauds: a law requiring that certain important agreements be written and signed to be legally enforceable.

How Much Notice is Required to End a Farm Lease

This is where handshake deals cause the most trouble. Under Indiana law, a tenancy from year to year — the default arrangement for farm ground that continues season after season without a fixed end date — can be ended only by giving the tenant notice “not less than three (3) months before the expiration of the year.” Indiana treats agricultural land differently from other rentals: the usual month-to-month default expressly “does not apply to land used for agricultural purposes.” 

There is an important exception: If the written lease itself fixes a specific term or termination date, no separate notice to quit is required — the lease speaks for itself.

Key term — tenancy from year to year: a lease that automatically renews each year unless one party gives proper advance notice to end it.

Example. Suppose a Montgomery County landowner has let a neighbor farm 120 acres on an annual cash-rent basis for years, with no written agreement. In August, the owner decides to lease to someone else for the coming season. Because there is no written end date, Indiana’s three-month rule applies: if the “lease year” runs on the calendar year, notice given in August may be too late to displace the existing tenant for the next year. A short written lease with a clear termination date would have avoided the dispute entirely.

Cash Rent vs. Crop-Share Leases

Indiana farm leases generally take one of two forms:

• Cash rent: The tenant pays a fixed dollar amount per acre.
• Crop-share: The landlord and tenant split the harvested crop (and often input costs) by an agreed percentage.

Indiana has agriculture-specific rules for crop-share and rent-in-kind arrangements. The landlord may hold a lien — a legal claim — on the crop to secure payment of rent, and the statute limits how much of the crop a tenant may remove before rent is paid. 

A well-drafted lease should also address:

• Who pays for seed, fertilizer, and drainage repairs
• How long the lease lasts
• Whether the tenant has a right of first refusal (the right to match any offer) if the land is sold.

Key term — right of first refusal: a contractual right allowing one party the first chance to buy or lease property on the same terms offered by a third party.

Agricultural Contracts

Beyond the lease, a working farm runs on contracts: grain marketing and forward contracts with the local elevator, equipment purchases and leases, custom farming and custom application agreements, seed and input supply contracts, and easements for drainage tile, field access, or utility and pipeline crossings.

These are ordinary contracts, but the stakes and the seasonal timing are distinctive. A forward contract locks in a price for grain to be delivered months later; a custom-farming agreement allocates the risk of a bad application or a missed window.

Example. A Tippecanoe County grower signs a forward contract to deliver 20,000 bushels of corn at a set price in the fall. A drought cuts the yield in half. Whether the grower must buy replacement bushels on the open market, or can walk away, turns entirely on the contract’s delivery, force-majeure, and default language. Having an attorney review the terms before signing is far cheaper than litigating them afterward.

Choosing a Business Entity for the Farm

Many Indiana farms operate as sole proprietorships simply because no one ever chose otherwise. Forming a business entity — most often a limited liability company (LLC) — can protect the family’s personal assets, simplify ownership among family members, and make succession far easier.

Key term — LLC (limited liability company): a business structure that generally protects its owners’ personal assets from the business’s debts and lawsuits, while allowing flexible management and tax treatment.

Why an LLC?

Indiana’s LLC statute is the Indiana Business Flexibility Act. Forming one is straightforward: at least one person creates the LLC by filing articles of organization with the Indiana Secretary of State, listing the company name, its Indiana registered office and registered agent, its duration, and whether it will be manager-managed.

The central benefit is the liability shield. Under Indiana law, a member, manager, agent, or employee of an LLC “is not personally liable for the debts, obligations, or liabilities of the limited liability company, whether arising in contract, tort, or otherwise” — though each person remains responsible for their own acts or omissions. In practice, that means a lawsuit or debt tied to the farm operation is generally limited to the farm’s assets rather than reaching the family home or off-farm savings.

Example. A family in Clinton County places its farmland and equipment in an LLC. A farm employee is in an accident with the grain truck. Because the operation runs through the LLC, the members’ personal assets are generally shielded from the LLC’s liabilities, and recovery is generally limited to the business — a result the sole proprietorship next door cannot count on.

Corporations and Partnerships

An LLC is not the only option. A corporation is formed by filing articles of incorporation with the Secretary of State, and its shareholders generally are not personally liable for the corporation’s debts absent their own misconduct. 

A general partnership, governed by Indiana’s Uniform Partnership Act, is the cautionary tale: partners are “jointly and severally” liable for the partnership’s obligations, meaning each partner can be held personally responsible for the whole.

A limited liability partnership (LLP) removes that exposure, shielding partners from partnership debts and from one another’s acts. 

Choosing among these forms — and coordinating the choice with tax planning — is a core reason to involve an attorney early.

Estate Planning for Farm Families

Estate planning is how you decide — in advance and in writing — who receives your property when you die, and who manages it if you cannot. For farm families, the “property” is often illiquid land worth far more on paper than the family has in cash, which makes planning essential.

What Happens Without a Will: Intestate Succession

If you die without a valid will, Indiana’s intestate succession statute decides who inherits — not you. 

Under those rules, a surviving spouse receives one-half of the net estate if the decedent left children (or their descendants), three-fourths if there are no children but a surviving parent, and all of it only if there is neither. Whatever does not pass to the spouse descends to children, then parents, then siblings, and on down a fixed statutory ladder — ultimately to the State of Indiana if no relatives can be found.

Blended families face a particular trap. If the surviving spouse is a second or subsequent spouse who never had children with the decedent, and the decedent left children from a prior relationship, that spouse takes only 25% of the net value of the real property (fair market value minus liens), with the land itself vesting immediately in the decedent’s children. For a farm family, that can force the sale of ground no one wanted to sell.

Example. A widower in Warren County remarries but never updates his estate plan and has no will. He owns 200 acres and has two adult children from his first marriage. On his death, his second wife receives only a 25% share of the real property’s net value, and the farmland vests in the children — a division that can splinter the operation and is almost never what the owner intended. A simple will or trust would have controlled the outcome.

The Core Estate Planning Tools

• Wills — direct who receives your property and name a personal representative, but generally require probate (the court-supervised process of settling an estate).
• Revocable living trusts — governed by the Indiana Trust Code, a trust is an arrangement in which a trustee holds title to property for beneficiaries. A trust created after June 30, 2005 is presumed revocable — meaning you can change or cancel it during your life — unless it says otherwise. A properly funded revocable trust lets farm assets pass to the next generation without probate; assets left out of the trust, by contrast, fall back into the probate estate.

Transfer on Death (TOD) Deeds

Indiana also allows a transfer on death deed under the Transfer on Death Property Act. A TOD deed lets a landowner name who will receive real estate at death while keeping full control during life. 

To work, the deed must be executed by the owner and recorded with the county recorder before the owner’s death — if it is not recorded in time, it is void. Recent amendments (effective July 1, 2025) require the county auditor’s endorsement to record the deed and allow an optional statutory insurance warning.

Key term — transfer on death (TOD) deed: a recorded deed that automatically transfers real estate to a named beneficiary when the owner dies, without probate, while leaving the owner in full control during life.

Farm Succession Planning

Farm succession planning is the long-term strategy for transferring both ownership and management of the farm to the next generation — ideally while the founding generation is still alive to guide the transition. Estate planning answers “who gets what when I die”; succession planning answers “how does this operation keep running for another generation.”

The hardest problem is usually fairness between farming and non-farming heirs. Dividing land equally among all children can hand control of the operation to relatives who never intended to farm, while leaving the child who stayed unable to make decisions or unable to afford to buy the others out.

Common tools include:

• Business entities (an LLC or corporation) that let ownership shares transfer gradually while keeping management consolidated.
• Buy-sell agreements that set, in advance, the price and terms on which one owner can buy out another.
• Trusts and TOD deeds that direct land to specific heirs without probate.
• Life insurance used to “equalize” — giving cash to non-farming children so the farming child can keep the land.

Example. A Boone County couple has two children: one runs the operation, the other lives out of state. Rather than leaving the farm equally (and forcing the farming child to buy out a sibling who could demand a sale), the parents place the land in an LLC, gift ownership units to the farming child over time, and use a life insurance policy to give the off-farm child an equivalent inheritance in cash. Both children are treated fairly, and the operation stays intact.

Other Areas Where an Ag Law Attorney Helps

Indiana farm operations also raise a range of specialized legal questions, including:

• Drainage, tile, and fence-line disputes with neighbors.
• Agricultural zoning and “right to farm” issues as development encroaches on rural land.
• Easements and pipeline, utility, or solar leases crossing farmland.
• Environmental and regulatory compliance (nutrient management, confined feeding operations, and pesticide rules).
• Farm employment and labor questions, including accidents and injuries on the farm.

Each of these benefits from counsel who understands both the law and how a farm actually operates.

Why Local Knowledge Matters

Much of Indiana ag law plays out at the county level. Deeds are recorded with the county recorder; property is valued by the county assessor; probate and land disputes are heard in the local circuit and superior courts. An attorney who regularly practices in Tippecanoe, Montgomery, and the surrounding counties knows the local offices, procedures, and land-use landscape — an advantage that a distant firm cannot easily match.

Frequently Asked Questions