Home>Levelset Community>Legal Help>I am working for a unlicensed contractor who I thought was licensed and haven't been paid in 3 weeks. what can I do?

I am working for a unlicensed contractor who I thought was licensed and haven't been paid in 3 weeks. what can I do?

CaliforniaBack Charges

I am working for a unlicensed contractor who I thought at the time I started was licensed since he gave me a card with company name on it so I can purchase material. I haven't been paid in over 3 weeks and am getting behind on bills.I have no idea what to do and I have documented every hour I've worked. So what do I do? Am I screwed? this is terrible.

1 reply

Mar 24, 2020

It depends on your role. If you are a individual employee that provided work on a project (i.e. a laborer), you will still have lien rights against the property for the amounts that you have earned. Laborers are not required to give preliminary notice like subcontractors are required to. You can file a lien on the property and/or serve a stop notice on the owner. Just be sure to be as accurate as possible regarding the amount owed. You can only lien a property for the amount you have worked on that project, so if there are multiple projects you will need a lien for each, and the liened amounts will need to be specific to the project being liened. Hopefully this will apply sufficient pressure to get you paid. After filing the lien you have 90 days to file an action to foreclose which would be expensive. The risk in this approach is that the owner waits the 90 days, you will have to move forward with a lawsuit or remove your lien. The deadline to enforce a stop payment notice is longer as it is based on projects completion or cessation rather than the date the stop notice is served.

0 people found this helpful

Helpful