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Clarification on Preliminary Notice - Wisconsin

I'm confused what a Preliminary Notice is. I'm the GC working on an addition to a single family home. I did not have a PN in place within the contract, nor did I serve one to the residential property owner within 10 days of beginning the job. Now I wish to file a lien. But because I did NOT send a PN as required, would that void any lien rights I might have had?

1 reply

Aug 18, 2019

It's common to be confused about preliminary notices. Generally speaking, contractors must send a preliminary notice at the start of a construction project to protect their lien rights. If preliminary notice is required and not sent...then yes, you will lose lien rights. It is very important to figure out, therefore, whether you were REQUIRED to deliver a preliminary notice. Preliminary notice requirements in Wisconsin are actually pretty confusing because the rules contain a lot of exceptions. The general rule in Wisconsin is that everyone must deliver a preliminary notice on the job. For "general contractors" or -- as they are called by the Wisconsin laws, "prime contractors" -- the notice must be included in the contract language itself, or, must be delivered to the property owner within 10 days. There is an important exception that may apply to you. This requirement only applies if you hired subs, suppliers, or service providers on the job. If you did all the work yourself and did not hire subs, suppliers, or service providers, then you would be exempt from the notice. Otherwise, unfortunately, the preliminary notice requirement would apply. Wisconsin also has a "notice of intent to lien" requirement, which is in addition to the preliminary notice requirement (see this article to understand the differences between a preliminary notice and a notice of intent to lien). So, if you met the prelim notice requirements, you will still need to also meet the NOI requirements in that state. We wrote a blog article on these two requirements here: Wisconsin Mechanics Lien Law: Preliminary Notice and Notice of Intent to Lien So, hope that this answer is helpful....and, although it's not likely, I hope you qualify for that exception. Unfortunately, many contractors learn about these notices for the first time in a situation just like this, when you're confronting a payment problem and start running into limitations because of a notice requirement. But the notice requirements are very real, and if you don't comply, you lose lien rights...this makes ignoring or not sending the notices a potentially very expensive oversight.

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