I missed my 20 day deadline, what can i do in order to file a lien or enusre payment?
1 reply
Nov 29, 2021
If you "miss" the 20-day deadline, you may still be able to salvage some of your lien rights. Under Arizona law, the 20-day deadline means that all labor and materials supplied to a property for its improvement no more than 20 days prior to the service of the 20-day notice will be covered under the notice and are eligible for a subsequent lien filing. You can serve a 20-day notice later than 20 days after the commencement of the project or your work, but it will only cover labor and materials supplied up to 20-days prior or subsequent to the service of the preliminary 20-day notice.
As an example, if you have a contract to do a job for $5,000, your work on a job began on June 1, and on that day you did $5,000 worth of work, but you didn't serve your 20-day notice until June 22, you could not lien any of the work in the event that you weren't paid. If however, you did $2,000 of work on June 1 and then came back on June 3 to do the balance of the work ($3,000), you could record a lien for the $3,000 of work done on June 3 since your preliminary 20-day notice (served on June 22) would cover any work and materials within the 20 days prior to the notice. June 3 is less than 20 days prior to June 22, so it would be covered.
If your work is ongoing and not only a one-time event, you should serve a 20-day notice immediately. Even if the notice doesn't cover all of your work, it is better to have some coverage than none.
If you have completely blown the 20-day time limit and your work is complete, you will need to consider alternative collection strategies besides a lien. You would likely still have claims for breach of contract, unjust enrichment, prompt pay violations, etc.
You should speak with an experienced construction attorney to discuss your options.