If you have not been paid for labor, services or materials furnished on a construction project in Florida, you may be able to collect the money you are owed by filing a mechanic’s lien (also referred to as a construction lien).  You can file a mechanic’s lien claim on your own, or call upon an attorney or mechanic’s lien service to help you navigate the paperwork and process.

Step 1: Determine If You Are Qualified To File A Mechanic’s Lien

Not everyone is entitled to file a mechanic’s lien. The services, materials or labor you furnish to a construction project must qualify for protection under Florida’s lien laws.  The term “Lienor” is defined by F.S. § 713.01(17) as follows:

(a) A contractor
(b) A subcontractor
(c) A sub-subcontractor
(d) A laborer
(e) A materialman who contracts with the owner, a contractor, a subcontractor or a sub-subcontractor; or
(f) A professional liener under § 713.03 (architect, landscape architect, interior designer, engineer, surveyor, mapper)

Noticeably absent from this list is the material supplier to a party who is not the owner, a contractor, a sub or a sub-sub.  Therefore, suppliers to other suppliers and suppliers to anyone who is a sub-sub-subcontractor (or below) is not protected.

Step 2: Confirm You Preserved Your Mechanic’s Lien Rights

In Florida, most construction participants must deliver some type of notice to preserve their rights to file a mechanic’s lien.

Those who did not contract with the property owner must deliver a “Notice to Owner” within 45 days of first furnishing labor or materials to the project.  The only exception to this “Notice to Owner” requirement is for pure laborers (who never need to deliver a preliminary notice).

Those who did contract with the owner must record a Notice of Commencement before the start of construction.

If you furnished this notice, you’re in luck, and you’ve preserved your right to file a mechanic’s lien. If you haven’t furnished the requisite notice, you may not have lien rights.

Step 3: Produce The Mechanics Lien Document With Required Content

Now it’s time to produce the mechanic’s lien form. Florida has strict requirements about what your mechanic’s lien must contain (see F.S. § 713.08) Here are a few:

• Identification of the party who hired you
• Description of the labor, materials or services furnished to the project
• The contract price or value of all services furnished
• Legal Property Description
• Identification of the Property Owner
• Date services first and last furnished
• Amount due and unpaid to you

The statute itself proscribes a form to use to file a Florida mechanic’s lien. Download the form for free here: Free Florida Mechanic’s Lien Form.

The most difficult part of completing this form is to insure you have the proper legal property description for the property being liened.

Step 4: Timely Record The Florida Mechanic’s Lien with the Proper Recording Office

The next step is to timely record your Florida mechanic’s lien.  Florida requires all parties to record their mechanic’s lien within 90 days after last furnishing services, labor or materials to the project. The courts will not accept any excuses for tardy recording.  If you record your mechanic’s lien late, the mechanic’s lien will be rendered void.

The Florida mechanic’s lien – statutorily referred to as a “Claim of Lien” – must be recorded in the county property records where the construction project itself is situated. Each county in Florida maintains its property records by the Clerk of Court for the Florida county, however, some counties delegate that property recording duty to a separate “County Recorder” office.  You want to be very careful here, and make certain that you record the mechanic’s lien instrument where it must be recorded.

Step 5: Send Notice That Mechanic’s Lien Was Recorded

Florida requires all mechanic’s lien claimants to serve a copy of the mechanic’s lien on the property owner “before recording or within 15 days after recording.”  This is a very important requirement in Florida, as §713.08(4)(c) provides that the failure to do this “shall render the claim of lien voidable to the extent that the failure or delay is shown to have been prejudicial to any person entitled to rely on the service.”

So, while the mechanics lien won’t be invalid per se, there is a significant risk that it could be nullified.  Moral: Get the mechanics lien served on the proeprty owner as soon as possible.

The mechanic’s lien must be served on the property owner pursuant to F.S. § 713.18, which provides for service by any of the following methods:

(a) By actual delivery to the person to be served; if a partnership, to one of the partners; if a corporation, to an officer, director, managing agent, or business agent; or, if a limited liability company, to a member or manager.

(b) By sending the same by registered or certified mail, with postage prepaid, or by overnight or second-day delivery with evidence of delivery, which may be in an electronic format.

(c) If the method specified in paragraph (a) or paragraph (b) cannot be accomplished, by posting on the premises.

Step 6:  Enforce Your Florida Mechanic’s Lien

Mechanic liens in Florida (or elsewhere) do not remain effective and encumbering against a property forever (See: Does A Mechanic’s Lien Cloud Title Forever?).

In Florida, mechanic liens must be enforced within 1 year from the date the lien is originally recorded. Be careful about this requirement, however, as this time period can be significantly shortened.

If a property owner serves a “Notice of Contest of Lien” document, the mechanic’s lien enforcement deadline is shortened to just 60 days.  If a property owner (or any other interested party) files a summons and complaint to show cause on the lien, the foreclosure deadline is shortened to just 20 days.

To learn more about lien foreclosure, read this tag: Foreclosures.

Some readers may have noticed this Construction Lien Blog underwent a design overhaul two or three weeks ago. We let it go without mentioning, as it was just a first step toward this complete overhaul. The blog’s new design now matches Zlien’s website, as we went live with the redesign over the weekend.

Although there are significant design enhancements with the new site design, I consider these two as the most significant improvements:

Mechanics Lien & Preliminary Notice Resources

When we set out to redesign the Zlien website, creating a more organized and user-friendly mechanics’s lien resource center was our top priority, and we believe we successfully redesigned this element of our offerings.

Now, the user can click on a state, and be brought to that state’s homepage for lien and notice resources.  All resources, whether it be deadline charts, state projects, private projects, statutes or forms, are all easily accessible from one spot online.  Plus, we even pump our mechanic’s lien law alerts from this blog onto the state’s homepage.

In addition to the design enhancements, we also have content enhancements.  There are more mechanic lien law and preliminary notice requirements published on the Zlien website than ever before, and we’ve got the web’s most extensive mechanic’s lien and preliminary notice forms database.  The best part about all of these forms?  They’re organized, easy to find, and free.

The Fastest, Smartest and Easiest Ordering System On The Planet

Although our Mechanic’s Lien Ordering System was the best and most sophisticated on the planet, we thought it could be even better. Now, it is.

We’ve improved our progress bar, so that instead of seeing a generic colored bar, you can see each step that is required to complete your order and just how much further you have left to fill out.  We’ve completely re-designed our order contact management system, making it more intuitive and easy to add project contacts to your order.  We’ve utilized APIs to match zip codes, cities, states and counties to ensure order accuracy. And finally, we’ve just made the dang thing look prettier.

If your company needs to deliver a preliminary notice, or file a mechanic’s lien or bond claim, there isn’t a faster, easier or more accurate way to get this done.  The Zlien Filing Wizard is the best on the planet, and you can give it a shot here: Order A Mechanic’s Lien Now.

In light of the blog series here for material suppliers, I’ve collated a lot of our lien law resources to create a state-by-state breakdown of what a material supplier needs to know about preliminary notices, mechanic liens and bond claims on state, county, federal and private projects in the United States.

The state-by-state guide is a little robust to include within the post, so you have to click on this link to view it, or you can download it at the link below.  Enjoy!

What Is A Credit Policy? A Mechanics Lien Policy?

According to businessdictionary.com, a credit policy is:

Clear, written guidelines that set (1) the terms and conditions for supplying goods on credit, (2) customer qualification criteria, (3) procedure for making collections, and (3) steps to be taken in case of customer delinquency. Also called collection policy.

So, if that’s a credit policy, what in the world is a mechanics lien policy?

This is actually a term-of-art I recently invented (I think) in response to inquiries from our clients about implementing procedures to help them utilize Zlien’s services and generally protect their lien rights on projects across the country.

This is something I alluded to in a previous post, “How To Incorporate Lien Protection Into Your Credit Policy – For Material Suppliers and Equipment Lessors.“  The idea is that in the construction industry, there’s a huge incentive to not only stay on top of standard credit and collection procedures, but to incorporate procedures to insure your lien rights are always protected.

A Mechanics Lien Policy is just that, an overview of what procedures your company will follow to preserve, perfect and enforce its mechanic lien rights.

Elements of a Mechanics Lien Policy for Material Suppliers

When crafting a Mechanics Lien Policy, material suppliers must keep in mind the credit and collection challenges specific to their industry.  We have a post about this from last week titled: Top 4 Mechanics Lien Law Challenges For Material Suppliers and Materialmen.

With these challenges in mind, here are some issues the building material supply company must keep in mind when writing a Mechanics Lien Policy:

What Is The Commitment To Sending Preliminary Notices?

Material suppliers are almost always required to send preliminary notice to preserve their mechanic lien rights. The backbone of your company’s mechanics lien policy, therefore, is to dictate the company’s commitment to sending preliminary notices.

In the sample mechanics lien and preliminary notice policy that I make available with this post, I address this commitment in a section titled “Mechanics Lien Philosphy.”  What goes here is a short statement about how aggressive your company intends to be with mechanic liens.  Are you looking to tip-toe around sending notices and filing liens because you’re scared of making waves with your clients (see Preliminary Notices Will Not Scare Your Customer!), or are you all-in and willing to send notices every time to ensure you have the maximum protection in the event of non-payment?

Here’s a quote from our sample lien policy’s mechanic lien philosophy:

[Example for Protection on Every Project:] The company furnishes materials on a high volume of projects, with the average value of those materials being between $50,000 and $75,000. Most of the time, these materials are sent to the job site on credit. Even though the credit worthiness of our clients are investigated pursuant to the company’s credit policy, because of the high dollar value of each shipment, the company values the option of filing a mechanics lien and desires sending all required preliminary notices to preserve those rights on every project. If an account remains unpaid, the company will file a mechanics lien before the state’s mechanic lien deadline. The company does so, despite the possibility of interfering with its relationships to project participants, because its willing to compromise elements of those relationships to protect its financial interests when payments are overdue.

Some companies like to separate their projects into risk categories, and then commit to sending preliminary notices to only those designated as high or medium risk. Risk categories can be based on any number of factors including the dollar value of the account (the more you can lose, the more risk) or the credit worthiness of the client.  What separates a high risk account from a low risk account is a call your company needs to make.

Outline A Plan for Execution

Once you decide who will get a preliminary notice and who won’t, it’s time to outline a plan to execute the policy.  The execution plan should not only contemplate how you’re going to send the preliminary notices, but also how and when you will file a mechanics lien, send the account to collections, and escalate the account to a foreclosure lawsuit.

Just as you would dictate within a credit policy when demand letters are sent and collection calls are made on overdue accounts, you’ll want to establish firm procedures on when notices, liens, collection efforts, and foreclosure lawsuits go forward.

Notices:  The thing about preliminary notices is that they are preliminary documents. You can’t wait until the account is overdue before sending these construction notices. You must send the notice to owner at the very start of furnishing to a project.  As such, the execution plan should call on your company to send a preliminary notice immediately upon signing a new contract or purchase order, or furnishing to a new project.

Mechanic Liens:  Unlike preliminary notices, mechanic liens are sent only after an account is overdue or some money is owed (with the exception of retainage).  While mechanic lien deadlines are important, you shouldn’t make a practice of waiting until just before the deadline to file your lien.  Not only does this subject you to error of a late filing, but you also miss opportunities to file your lien when the project is full of funding.  Earlier liens perform better, just like early collection efforts are more successful.

Your company should have a set number of days you wait until filing a lien, and it should be somewhat short.  Something like 30-45 days after last furnishing materials. This insures that (i) You get the lien filed while the account is still fresh, making collection more likely; and (ii) You don’t wait too long, as most lien deadlines are longer than 30-45 days.

Collections:  You may have between 90 days and 6 years to have your mechanics lien foreclosed upon.  Don’t wait that long. Give the mechanics lien 30-45 days to work by itself, and if it doesn’t work, escalate the situation and start collection efforts.

Foreclosure Lawsuit: Stay on top of the claim, so that if collection efforts don’t work within another 30-60 days, move the account up and require a lawsuit get filed to foreclose on the lien.

The specific number of days I propose here are just suggestions.  The important thing is to find something that works for your company, and to have a systematic, consistent execution. Also, when setting your execution policy, be sure to pay attention to the next point:  your deadlines.

Monitor Your Deadlines and File Your Documents Right

There are a lot of similarities between a credit policy and a mechanics lien policy. One key difference, however, is that when dealing with mechanic liens, preliminary notices and bond claims, compliance with complex legal nuances is required.  There are two primary components to this legal compliance:  (1) Getting everything filed before the deadline; and (2) Getting everything filed right.

First, everything in the mechanics lien world has a deadline.  There’s a deadline to send preliminary notices, to file the lien, to foreclose on the lien, and more. These deadlines change from project to project and state to state, and it’s going to be impossible for your company to track these deadlines.  You need a system, or to outsource your mechanics lien deadline monitoring.

Second, the notice, lien and bond claim forms and laws are hyper-technical. If you don’t complete the form exactly right, and send or file it in the exact right way, you’re going to forfeit your lien rights.  You want to make sure you understand all of the requirements (which is hard, because again, they change state-to-state and project-to-project).  Consider outsourcing this work.  See: 4 Reasons It’s Smart to Outsource Your Preliminary Notice Work.

Sample Policy

Finally, as promised, you can download a sample mechanics lien policy I’ve put together.  It can be used by anyone in the construction industry, but I wrote it with material suppliers specifically in mind.  You will notice that some items are in gray, as they present to you some choices in language.  Plus, you should edit the policy to fit to your company’s goals and philosophy.

Download the Sample Mechanics Lien Policy Here:
Sample Mechanics Lien Policy And Procedures – Word Version
Sample Mechanics Lien Policy And Procedures – PDF Version

Free Florida Mechanics Lien Forms For Download

Notice to Owner / Notice to Contractor

All parties who do not contract directly with the property owner in Florida must deliver a preliminary notice within 45 days of first furnishing materials and/or labor to the project. When there isn’t a payment bond posted to the project, the notice is styled a “Notice to Owner.”  When a bond is posted, however, the notice is styled a “Notice to Contractor.”

The Notice to Contractor is always delivered to the general contractor.  The Notice to Owner, however, must be provided to the property owner and everyone “above the contracting chain” from you.  Since potential lien claimants may not know whether a bond has been placed, or the specifics about who is issuing the bond, Florida law allows you to request identification of the bond from the property owner or prime contractor.

Further, you can send a combined “Notice to Contractor / Notice to Owner” preliminary notice, which will protect both your lien rights and bond claim rights.  The free form provided here is such a combined Notice to Contractor / Notice to Owner.  It also contains a formal written request for identification of the bond.

Claim of Lien

When unpaid on a construction project in Florida, parties may file a mechanics lien against the real property, gaining a real security interest in the property itself equal to the value of the services, labor and/or materials furnished to the project.  Mechanic liens in Florida must be filed within 90 days of last furnishing labor and/or materials to a construction project.  More specific information about Florida’s mechanic lien laws can be found in the post on this blog: 5 Things To Know About Florida’s Mechanics Lien Law.

This particular form should be filled in, signed and notarized, and then filed with the Clerk of Court for the county where the project is located. While usually filing with the Clerk of Court is sufficient, some counties have a separate County Recorder department.  If this is the case, the lien should be filed in with the recorder and not the clerk.

Notice of Non-Payment

When a bond has been issued for the project, lien claimants are entitled to file a claim against the bond, and not the real property itself.  This claim must be delivered to the prime contractor and the surety company by certified mail, with return receipt requested.  It must be delivered within 90 days of last furnishing labor and/or materials to the construction project.  The “Notice of NonPayment,” while creating a formal notice upon the claim under the Florida Construction Lien Law, does not require recording with the clerk or recorder.

Notice of Contest

If your property is liened, and you don’t want to wait for an entire year to see whether the lienor intends to file a lien foreclosure action, in Florida you can serve a “Notice of Contest” upon the lienor.  Service of this notice shortens the lien effective period from one year to just 60 days, meaning the lienor will be required to file the lawsuit to foreclose the lien within the following 60 days or the mechanics lien will be rendered void.

This document must be signed and notarized, and served on the lienor by certified mail with return receipt requested.

Discharge of Lien

After receiving payment on a mechanics lien, or for other reasons, you’ll be required to discharge your mechanics lien from public records.  The lien discharge documentation should be filed in the same recorder or clerks’ office where the mechanics lien itself was recorded.  The document must be signed and notarized, and must actually reference details about the recorded lien within it.

The Value of Zlien’s Services

While forms are important and Zlien prides itself on having the most complete and accurate set forms, there is more to filing a mechanics lien or properly sending a  notice to owner than just filling out the form and sending it on its way.  We provide these forms to our readers free of charge, but that’s because we understand that the true value of Zlien’s service is more than just providing our clients with forms.

First, forms are fluid.  The forms we provide above are simple generic forms for Florida mechanic liens. However, depending on your role in the project and the work you’re performing, these lien forms may exclude certain fields, or may change slightly in one way or another.  Plus, you have to make a decision about which form is the right form for you to use. When you use the Lien Wizard, all of these nuances and variables are taken into consideration.

Second, there are a lot of steps in putting these documents together and getting them filed or delivered.  A service like Zlien that handles all of the logistics has a value that cannot be understated.  Take a look at this blog post for a more detailed explanation: Why You Shouldn’t Use Do-It-Yourself Mechanic Lien and Notice Forms.

The page leads off with this pithy summary of lien laws in California:

A Mechanics’ Lien is an effective remedy for contractors, subcontractors, and others involved in the construction or improvement of real estate to resolve payment problems. If a service or materials provider records a Mechanics’ Lien against the real estate being improved, the owner can not easily sell or refinance the property without first paying off the debt secured by the lien. A Mechanics’ Lien motivates the owner to make sure the contractors get paid, and is a prerequisite to filing a foreclosure action on the property.

And provides these resources, useful for anyone wanting to know more about California liens and preliminary notices:

- Nolo Article on California Lien Structure

- Free forms available through Sacramento County Public Library

- Information on how to record documents in California (great basic information about how and where documents like liens get recorded).

The best place to start is on our Lien Law Punchlists and Forms page, within the Support section of the Zlien website.  Here, you can download free forms (for liens, notices and more), as well as a brief one-page summary of each state’s lien laws.  Currently, our most popular states are represented, but we’re adding more resources everyday.

Coming soon?   Useful links, videos, and more.

It’s our goal to be the single most comprehensive resource to contractors for construction liens and bond claims.   How are we doing?

You can learn about the mechanics of filing a mechanics lien from this great Avvo.com article:  Filing a Mechanics Lien in New York.

So, maybe you’ve purchased a lien form online or at your local Office Depot, or even downloaded the form on our website for free (its right here).   Filling it out and filing at the county recorder’s office is quite simple, and may not be too much trouble.   But, are you then prepared to properly deliver it to all the required parties?  And to execute an affidavit of delivery?  And to go back to the recorder and timely file your proof of delivery?

The time and detail required for these tasks can be overbearing.

And sometimes, as was indicated in the post about South Carolina’s service procedures, the process can be complicated.

At Zlien, we file liens across the country day-in and day-out.  In New York, the cost of your lien filing includes delivery to all the required parties, maintaining proof of the delivery, and filing the proof of delivery with the recorder’s office.

You give us the key information, and we do the rest.

Plus, our industry-leading lien management and compliance system provides your company with the following at no charge:

• Manage project data and project contacts in web-based Lien Pilot
• Calculate lien deadlines
• Read the notice and lien requirements for your specific project
• Get lien law alerts when laws change in the states where you work
• Your lien documents and proof of service are stored online in your free account.

How to File a Construction Lien in Oregon

How to File a Construction Lien in Louisiana

These two legal guides offer plain english explanations on how to prepare and file a construction lien in either of these states.    After reading the guide, you can visit Zlien’s free Lien Punchlist & Forms center, where you can download more information about on the subject, and even download free PDF-fillable lien forms.

Want to dot your i’s and cross your t’s, and rest easy knowing your document will get filed?   Consider using the Zlien service to prepare your lien, file and serve it, and then store it online for your records.

The two above-listed legal guides were written and published by Scott Wolfe Jr., who is the founder of Zlien and the company’s President.   Separate from Zlien, Scott is a practicing construction attorney in Washington, Oregon and Louisiana, with his construction practice the Wolfe Law Group.

He previously published a similar legal article on Avvo.com about filing construction liens in Washington, which you can read here.