Rice Business Report August 2019 Rice Business Report August 2019 | Page 3

Rice Business Report August 2019
Ten Reasons to Have a Lawyer Prepare Your Mechanic’s Lien
If you’re in business, sooner or later, someone will fail to pay you for your services. The good news is
that if you’re a contractor, it’s possible to get security for that unpaid debt, even after the work is done.
A properly filed Mechanic’s Lien will allow you to foreclose on the property that you provided labor or
materials to improve.
1. Short, Strict Deadlines. The deadlines for filing Mechanic’s Liens are both short and strict. In some
cases, the deadline will have passed before you realize that the customer isn’t paying. In addition,
the statute is difficult to read and understand, because there are multiple deadlines to watch out
for. If you miss one of the deadlines, and your lien may not be enforceable at all, meaning that you
won’t be able to foreclose it. If that happens, you’re no better off than you were before you filed
the lien.
2. Required Notices. Providing proper notices is critical to the validity of the lien, and you’ll need to
notify every contractor between you and the owner. For this reason, it’s always advisable to gather
this information at the start of the job, when everyone is friendly and eager to move forward. Later,
it may be difficult to find all of the proper people, and an attorney has skills and resources to do this
more quickly.
3. Identifying the Property Owner. It is critical that the owner of the property be notified of the lien
within five days of the day the lien is filed. Providing notice of the lien to the owner also increases
the likelihood that the lien will be paid without having to file suit to foreclose it. You cannot depend
on property tax records to determine the ownership, because the only thing the taxing agencies care
about is where to send the bill. You need to take the information you see in the tax records and
then look in county real property records, find the deed, and confirm that the property hasn’t been
sold. If you don’t know how to do this, you need a lawyer.
4. Legal Description of the Property. Your lien needs to show the proper legal description of the prop-
erty, which you will find in the deed. Avoid using the legal description in the property tax records,
which is incomplete and sometimes inaccurate. If the property is properly and completely identified
in your lien affidavit, it will be difficult for the owner to sell the property without providing for your
lien.
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