Expunging Indiana Convictions From Two Different Counties

Attorney Answer

You do not need a lawyer to file — but the two-county part of your question is exactly where a self-filed expungement goes wrong, because Indiana lets most people file only once in a lifetime, and separate-county petitions count as one filing only if they all go in within a single 365-day period.

Indiana's expungement chapter is IC 35-38-9. A petition to expunge conviction records is filed in a circuit or superior court in the county where the conviction was entered. Two subsections control your situation:

IC 35-38-9-8(h): you must consolidate ALL convictions from the same county into a single petition, and if you have convictions in separate counties you must file a petition in each county in which a conviction was entered. It is one petition per county, not one per case number. - IC 35-38-9-8(i): a person may file a petition for expungement only one time in his or her lifetime — but petitions filed in separate counties, for offenses committed in those counties, count as one petition if they are all filed within a single 365-day period.

Read those together and the risk is obvious. File in County A, get busy, and come back to County B fourteen months later, and you may have spent your one lifetime petition on half your record. That is the mistake a lawyer is genuinely worth money to prevent, and it is not one you can fix afterward.

Eligibility and waiting periods are set by the earlier sections of the same chapter and vary by the level of the offense, and they are measured from conviction or from completion of the sentence depending on the category. You need to confirm both counties are ripe before you file either one, because filing early and getting denied still costs you the filing.

What you can do

1. Pull your complete criminal history and the court records from both counties — every cause number, charge, disposition date, and sentence-completion date. Do not work from memory. 2. Confirm under IC 35-38-9 that the waiting period has run for every conviction in both counties, and that fines, costs and restitution are paid and no charges are pending. 3. Draft one petition per county, consolidating every conviction from that county into it, as IC 35-38-9-8(h) requires. 4. Plan both filings inside a single 365-day window so IC 35-38-9-8(i) treats them as one lifetime petition. Ideally file them within weeks of each other, not months. 5. Serve the prosecuting attorney in each county and calendar the response period. 6. If either county's record is complicated — multiple cases, a case that was modified, an out-of-state conviction, uncertainty about which subsection your offense falls under — pay a lawyer for at least a review before you file anything. A single consultation is cheap next to a forfeited lifetime petition.

⏱ Time limits apply. IC 35-38-9-8(i)'s 365-day window is a real deadline, and it starts running with your first filing. The waiting periods in IC 35-38-9 are separate deadlines that must have already passed before you file. Both depend on your specific conviction dates and sentence-completion dates, so confirm them against your actual records before you file in either county.