The Notice of Intent To Lien is a beautiful document, and it may be just the right thing to get your company paid quick, without the hassles and expense of filing a mechanics lien. While the notice may not be formally required (it usually isn’t), this blog post outlines two reasons why the Notice of Intent To Lien may be your best collections option.
It’s A Great Bluff If You Don’t Have The Right To File A Mechanics Lien
There are a thousand reasons why you may not have the right to file a mechanics lien against a construction project. As way of example, you may have:
- Supplied materials that were not incorporated into the project
- Failed to protect your lien rights by sending a required preliminary notice
- Missed your lien filing deadline
Whatever the reason, sending a notice of intent to lien may be a great move for your company because you can bluff and make the other party think you may move to file a mechanics lien. You can, by the way, use the notice of intent bluff even if you do have lien rights but aren’t likely to use them.
The notice of intent bluff works well for two reasons.
First, while you may not have lien rights, that may not be obvious to the other parties or even yourself. There is a lot of gray area in the mechanics lien world and it’s hard to say definitively whether you have rights or not because of the layers and layers of rules and exceptions. When you say you intend to file a lien, even if you don’t ultimately have the rights, it’s complicated and expensive to work out whether you do or don’t.
Second, even if the receiving party knows you don’t have lien rights, they might be inclined to pay your claim just to avoid fighting you on the matter, as lien challenges are expensive and risky.
It’s An Inexpensive And Risk Free Thing To Attempt
Sending a notice of intent to lien is a lot less expensive than filing a mechanics lien.
There are a lot of reasons for the price difference, such as:
- Liens must be filed, notices of intent do not
- Liens must be researched, notices of intent usually do not
- Liens have filing fees, service fees, courier fees and the like, and notices of intent do not
Convinced? Send A Notice of Intent To Lien Through Levelset
It’s time for you to get smart about collecting money due to you – Send A Notice of Intent to Lien Now.