Is door-to-door soliciting legal in Indiana?

Indiana’s criminal trespass statute lists the ways a person can be denied entry, and one of them is a notice posted or exhibited at the main entrance in a manner likely to come to the attention of the public. The statute also recognizes the purple-mark system for land, specified down to the inch.

Knowingly or intentionally entering after that denial is criminal trespass - a Class A misdemeanor. That puts Indiana in the small group of states where the sign by your door is doing statutory work, not just social work.

In a home consumer transaction the supplier must hand you two copies of a written notice of your right to cancel, on a separate document, in at least ten-point boldface type. It has to give the address to send your cancellation to, the steps you take, the steps they take, and the date by which you must act.

The underlying right runs until midnight of the third business day after you and the supplier finally agree. Home improvement contracts have their own parallel regime in IC 24-5-11.

Indiana treats home improvement contracts as a separate category with its own statement-of-right-to-cancel requirements. If the doorstep pitch was roofing, siding, windows or similar, that chapter is the one to read - and a contract that lacks the required cancellation language is defective on its face.

Indianapolis runs a No-Solicitation list under Chapter 391 of the Revised Code, administered by the Department of Business and Neighborhood Services, which publishes the registered addresses to solicitors. Commercial solicitation at a listed address is prohibited, and in-person solicitation is barred 30 minutes after sunset or 9 p.m., whichever is earlier.

The catch nobody mentions: registration is annual and runs only to December 31 of the year you sign up. You have to re-register on or after January 1 every year, or you quietly fall off the list.

A protection that silently expires each New Year is the clearest argument there is for a registry that does not.

Under Carmel City Code § 4-26, licensed door-to-door vendors may work only between 9 a.m. and dusk. The license comes from the Police Department and is not casual: a $50 non-refundable application fee, a $500 surety bond, a criminal history check per solicitor, and an ID card for each employee.

The ordinance then says something worth quoting at a door: issuing a license and identification card does not empower a vendor to ignore “no solicitation” signs or to fail to immediately honor other lawful requests not to trespass.

Carmel draws a line worth knowing: a sign at a neighborhood entrance is only a deterrent, but one posted on your own property is enforceable by police.