Rule 72.Trial Court and Clerks

Section (A) does away with the old idea of court “terms” — set periods when a court was formally in session — and declares Indiana’s trial courts open at all times for filing pleadings and papers, issuing and returning process, and handling interlocutory motions and orders. Section (B) addresses where things happen: trials on the merits belong in open court, in a regular courtroom, in or outside the county seat as convenience allows. Everything else — routine hearings and other proceedings — a judge can handle in chambers, without the clerk or other court staff present, anywhere inside or outside the judge’s home circuit. The one hard limit: apart from an ex parte matter, a judge can’t hold a hearing outside Indiana unless every affected party consents.

Section (C) keeps the clerk’s office open during business hours every day except Saturdays, Sundays, and legal holidays. Eight holidays are permanently off-limits no matter what a court decides — New Year’s Day, Washington’s Birthday, Memorial Day, Independence Day, Labor Day, Veterans Day, Thanksgiving Day, and Christmas Day — but the circuit court’s presiding judge can, by local rule or order, open the office for specified hours on a Saturday or on some other legal holiday. Routine clerical business — issuing process, including the final process used to enforce and execute judgments, along with other matters that don’t call for a judge’s decision — is handled by the clerk automatically, without asking the court first. If the clerk gets something wrong, the court can suspend, change, or undo the clerk’s action upon cause shown.

Section (D) puts the clerk on the hook for notifying the parties. The moment a ruling, order, or judgment is noted on the case’s Chronological Case Summary — Indiana’s official case record — the clerk has to serve a copy of that entry on every party who isn’t in default for failing to appear, and log that the copy went out. That service alone counts as sufficient notice, though any party can also serve its own separate notice. In a consolidated case with ten or more parties, the trial judge can order a simplified system that runs notice through designated liaison parties instead of reaching everyone individually. And every attorney, along with anyone representing themselves, has a duty to keep a current mailing address and email address on file with the case — service at either one counts as valid.

Section (E) covers what happens when that notice system fails. As a rule, not getting notice — or not receiving the clerk’s copy — doesn’t stop the clock on a deadline to contest a ruling, order, or judgment, and doesn’t give the court free rein to excuse a party who missed that deadline. There’s one narrow exception: if the Chronological Case Summary doesn’t show that the clerk’s copy went out, the court can, for good cause, extend the deadline for a party who had no actual knowledge of the ruling, or who was misled by something a court employee told them. That extension starts running only once the party learns about the ruling, and it can never run longer than the original deadline would have allowed.