Our tenants he is a contractor and destroyed our home… In our lease we stated that he could add the trim to the windows for reduced rent. He did not do that. He did however destroy our home steal things and when we asked him to return the items he stoleHe is now threatening a Mechanics lien on our home. Can he do this? We had just put a lot of work into the Home and it did not need remodeling but now it is structurally unstable and unsafe due to the things he did. Help?
Mechanics lien rights will only be available when the claimant has performed authorized work which resulted in the permanent improvement of the property. Where a contractor's work was not agreed to by the owner, and where the work actually destroyed the property, a mechanics lien will not be appropriate. Further, keep in mind that lien rights are only available to the extent that payment is owed for the work as well.
Of course, even where a lien claim is ultimately inappopriate, it's possible that a claimant could get their lien filed. Generally, county recorder offices will have neither the authority nor the bandwidth to investigate each claim made in their office. So, a claimant could still place an improper lien in the property record - but there are stiff penalties for filing fraudulent mechanics liens, and an owner should be able to get the lien removed and could even be entitled to damages for their trouble.
As a last note, these two articles should be useful: (1) I Just Received a Mechanics Lien Threat – What Should I Do Now? ; and (2) A Mechanics Lien Was Filed on My Property – What Do I Do Now?