Lien rights are powerful tools that help companies in the construction business get paid the money they have earned. But managing lien rights – especially for construction companies that try to do it on their own – is not exactly easy, since there are very exacting rules and requirements that must be met in order to keep your lien rights intact.
Deadlines Are Critically Important to Lien Rights Rights Management
Some of the most stringent and specific rules that govern the lien rights process are all of the deadlines that must be met.
In most states, the lien rights process involves four steps:
1) Send Preliminary Notice
2) Send Notice of Intent
3) File a Mechanics Lien
4) Enforce the Lien
…and in most cases, there are strict deadlines for performing each of these actions.
And any missed deadline in the mechanics lien process can invalidate a mechanics lien claim, possibly ending your ability to get paid the money you earned on a construction job.
Spend any time visiting the Levelset home office and you’ll hear the phrase “trigger date” being used pretty often. A trigger date on a construction project is any date that is used as the basis to set a deadline. These important dates – and the deadlines that derive from them – vary from state-to-state, and also will change depending up a company’s role on the project, the type of project, and other factors.
A list of Levelset’s
“Trigger Date Greatest Hits”
A partial listing of some of the more significant dates relevant to the mechanics lien process:
- Project Start Date
- Date of Contract
- Project End Date
- Date of Substantial Completion
- Date of First Furnishing
- Date of Last Furnishing
- Invoice Date
- Date Notice of Intent to Lien was sent
- Lien Filing Date
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To get a full grasp on trigger dates you should also know that they do not work alone. Trigger dates go in hand in hand with varying state statutes and deadlines. Having an incorrect trigger date can affect the allotted time given to send notices and/or file a mechanics lien.
Lien laws are complex, construction work is hard, and as a small business owner, you undoubtedly have better ways to spend your time than monitoring deadlines, which is why we at Levelset have developed a system to solve this problem for you. When your lien law rights are at stake, it is of obvious value to you to have an integrated state-by-state system that empowers you to get paid for the work you’ve performed.
As part of the suite of services we provide, we offer resources that can help you ensure you’re meeting important filing deadlines. For example, the Lien Deadline Calculator is an automated tool you can use to generate deadlines based on the trigger dates you provide and the statutes for a specific state. It’s a quick and easy way to monitor your project and ensure that you are within your filing deadline(s). Additionally, our subscribers have access to a deadline calendar, which will prompt you to enter a project’s relevant trigger dates.