I'm a subcontractor and we warned the contractor that we was going to file a lien against him if he didn't pay well he gave us partial money about $3,000 out of the $6,000 he owes us.. plus he stated that he would give us an extra thousand for making us wai and its been about 5 months already and still no response
I am sorry to hear about the issues you have experienced. In general, if contractors and suppliers don't get paid on a construction project in Tennessee, they can file a mechanics lien to secure payment. A mechanics lien is a helpful legal tool that provides parties that have failed to be paid with a security interest in the property. If you plan to file a mechanics lien in Tennessee to secure payment in which you are owed, there are several important deadlines you need to keep
in mind to maintain your mechanics lien rights.
Keep in mind that in Tennessee as the subcontractor a notice of non-payment must be provided to the owner within 90 days of the last day of the month labor and materials provided. Generally, a lien must be filed within 90 days of the completion of the work or improvement. Finally, all lien claimants without direct contact with the property owner must initiate an action to enforce their lien within 90 days of the lien's filing. Considering it has been over 5 months since you have had contact with the contractor it is reasonable to assume that it has been greater than 90 days since work has been completed.
Considering the deadline to file a mechanics lien has passed you likely will ask if there is anything a claimant can do about a late lien? First, when it appears that a lien deadline may have passed by, the first thing you should do is determine whether the deadline has in fact actually passed. Although this seems simple, deadlines can be trickier to calculate than it seems like they should be. Next, if it is determined that the deadline really has passed there are still a few options available. One option is to go ahead and file a mechanics lien anyway. It is never a good idea to file a lien that you know is invalid or improper yet there is enough gray area around the calculation of lien deadlines that sometimes the questions aren't cut and dry. Filing a lien can prompt payment by bringing the payment dispute to the attention of the relevant parties, even if an enforcement action the lien may not be effective. Please keep in mind that filing an invalid lien is NOT a good idea and knowingly filing a fraudulent lien can open up the claimant to potential civil or criminal penalties. Finally, there are other protections built into the law to help ensure payment and other action that can be taken to move payment along. Here are a few potential steps in the absence of a mechanics lien right:
Send the property owner a notice of intent to lien.
Notices of intent to lien can be extremely effective in promoting payment – and just because you may not actually file a lien, it can still be a threat in the arsenal to prompt payment.
Send to collections.
If you have an internal or external collections department or partner, sending a claim to them early in the process with all available supporting information can have good results.
File suit.
Litigation is generally a last resort, but just because there is no mechanics lien right to enforce, that doesn’t mean that there isn’t a cause of action to pursue: Prompt pay statutes, breach of contract, unjust enrichment, and more can all provide avenues to recovery.