Arizona preliminary twenty day notice, free and word for word from A.R.S. 33-992.01

In Arizona the general contractor sends one too

Most preliminary notice statutes are aimed at the people the owner has never met. Arizona is not written that way. Subsection B says every person who furnishes labor, professional services, materials, machinery, fixtures or tools for which a lien otherwise may be claimed shall serve the notice as a necessary prerequisite to the validity of any claim of lien, and it names one exception only: a person performing actual labor for wages.

So the original contractor, the one with the contract signed by the owner, serves a preliminary twenty day notice on that same owner. It reads strange the first time. It is still the rule, and general contractors lose liens over it.

The list of who gets served is in the same subsection: the owner or reputed owner, the original contractor or reputed contractor, the construction lender if any or reputed construction lender if any, and the person with whom the claimant has contracted. Reputed is doing real work in that sentence. If you are not certain who the owner is, serving the reputed owner is what the statute asks of you, not perfect research.

Subsection A defines construction lender as any mortgagee or beneficiary under a deed of trust lending funds all or a portion of which are used to defray the cost of the work, and any assignee or successor in interest. If no such loan exists, the line stays blank and nothing is lost.

The twenty days, and what actually happens when you miss them

Subsection C sets the deadline at twenty days after you first furnished to the jobsite. Not twenty days after the contract, not twenty days after your first invoice, twenty days after the first delivery or the first day of work.

Now the part almost nobody knows. Subsection E says a person who elects not to give the notice is not precluded from giving one later, within twenty days after furnishing other labor or materials to the same jobsite. The catch is in the next sentence: that person is entitled to claim a lien only for what was furnished within twenty days before the service of the notice, and at any time thereafter.

Read it as a moving window rather than a door that slams. Send the notice today and everything from twenty days ago forward is covered. Everything before that is gone. On a job that ran six months before anyone thought about paperwork, a notice served today still protects most of what is left to bill, which is usually where the money is.

That is the reason to send a late notice instead of giving up on it. It is not a reason to be late. The twenty day window costs you real money every day it slides.

How to serve it, and why the acknowledgment is page two

Subsection F allows three methods: first class mail sent with a certificate of mailing, registered mail, or certified mail, postage prepaid in all cases, addressed to the person at a residence or business address. Service is complete at the time of the deposit of notice in the mail, so the twenty days are measured to the day you mail it and not to the day it lands.

First class with a certificate of mailing is the cheapest of the three and the statute puts it first. A certificate of mailing is not the same thing as certified mail and it does not need a signature, which is exactly why it is useful: nobody can refuse it.

A.R.S. 33-992.02 is how you prove you mailed it. Paragraph 1 is an acknowledgment of receipt in substantially the form printed on page two here, which is why subsection D of 33-992.01 ends by directing that language be inserted into the notice itself. You send it out with your own signature on it and the recipient signs it and sends it back.

Paragraph 2 is what happens when they do not. If the person fails to complete the acknowledgment, or fails to complete and return it within thirty days from the date of mailing, proof of mailing may be made by affidavit of the person who did the mailing, showing the time, place and manner of mailing and the name and address of the person it went to. The certificate of mailing goes on the affidavit if you sent it first class, and the certification or registration receipt goes on it if you sent it certified or registered.

Keep all of it. A.R.S. 33-993(A)(6) says the notice and claim of lien shall state the date the preliminary twenty day notice was given, and that a copy of the notice and the proof of mailing required by 33-992.02 shall be attached. The proof is not a file you keep in case of a dispute, it is a page of the lien you record.

One notice covers the job until the price moves thirty percent

Subsection G says you need give only one notice with respect to all the labor and materials furnished for the building, structure or improvement. Two exceptions end that. The first is price: if the actual estimated total price exceeds by thirty percent or more the total price in any prior notice, the notice requirements have to be met again for the additional work. The second is structural: if the items are furnished under contracts with more than one subcontractor, the requirements have to be met for the additional items.

Subsection H is the same idea running the other way, and it is protective. A notice is not defective because after the date of the notice you furnish things outside the general description you gave, or exceed the estimate by less than thirty percent.

Put the two together and the estimate on this form is not a quote and not a promise. It is a number with a thirty percent tolerance around it. Estimate high rather than low, describe your work in general terms rather than line by line, and a change order will not cost you the notice.

Make the owner fill in the blanks for you

The legal description, the lender, the exact name of the owner. You often do not have them, and Arizona gives you a way to demand them. Subsection J says that within ten days after receipt of a written request from a person intending to file a preliminary twenty day notice, or within ten days after receipt of the notice itself, the owner or other interested party shall furnish a written statement containing five things.

Those five are the legal description or a description of the jobsite sufficient for identification, the name and address of the owner or reputed owner, the name and address of the original contractor or reputed contractor, the name and address of the construction lender if any, and, if any payment bond has been recorded under 33-1003, a copy of the bond and the name and address of the surety company and bonding agent.

The request has to identify you, your address, the jobsite and the general nature of what you are furnishing. That is all. Send the notice and the request together and the ten days start the day the notice arrives.

Subsection K is the teeth. Failure to furnish the information does not excuse you from giving the notice on time, but it does stop the owner from raising as a defense any inaccuracy of the information in your notice. So a notice with a rough property description, sent on time, is worth far more than a perfect one sent late.

If the information does arrive and your notice turns out to be wrong, subsection K gives you thirty days from receiving it to give an amended notice. The amended notice is considered given at the same time as the original, with one limit: it is effective only as to work performed twenty days before the amended notice or the date the original notice was given, whichever occurs first. And if a payment bond was recorded and the owner never sent you a copy, you keep lien rights to the extent you were prejudiced from claiming against that bond.

The bold type rule, and why this form does not obey it literally

The statute gives two typography orders. Subsection C paragraph 5 requires the Notice to Property Owner statement in bold-faced type. The form in subsection D adds that the two ten day paragraphs shall be in type at least as large as the largest type otherwise on the document.

The statement is bold here. The two ten day paragraphs are bold as well rather than larger, because the largest type otherwise on this document is the title at the top, and setting two paragraphs of body text at title size makes the page harder to read rather than easier.

That is a deliberate choice and Arizona allows it in as many words. Subsection I says a notice that is otherwise compliant with the section is not defective based on the failure to use bold-faced type as prescribed, or the failure to use type at least as large as the largest type otherwise on the document, or both. Subsection I is not a loophole somebody found. It is in the statute, and it is there because the type rules were costing people liens.

After the notice: the dates that end the lien, and when there is none

The notice buys you the right to record. A.R.S. 33-993(A) gives you one hundred twenty days after completion to record the notice and claim of lien, or sixty days after recordation of a notice of completion if one was recorded. Completion is defined in subsection C as the earliest of thirty days after final inspection and written final acceptance by the governmental body that issued the building permit, or cessation of labor for sixty consecutive days, except when the cessation is due to a strike, a shortage of materials or an act of God. Subsection D covers the job with no permit or no final inspections: completion is then the last date labor, materials, fixtures or tools were furnished.

A.R.S. 33-998 gives the lien six months from recording and no longer, unless an action is brought within that period and a notice of pendency of action is recorded under section 12-1191 in the county where the property is. The lawsuit alone is not enough. The recorded notice of pendency is part of the requirement.

Two situations mean there is no lien at the end of any of this. A.R.S. 33-1002(B) says no lien shall be allowed or recorded against the dwelling of a person who became an owner-occupant before the work, except by a person having executed in writing a contract directly with that owner-occupant. On a single family or two family home where the owner lived there first, a subcontractor or supplier has no lien to protect. Subsection C makes any waiver of that section by the owner-occupant void, so it cannot be contracted around.

A.R.S. 33-1003 is the other one. If the owner required a payment bond and recorded it together with a copy of the contract, no lien is allowed after that except by the person who contracts in writing directly with the owner. That is exactly why subsection J of 33-992.01 makes the owner send you a copy of the bond, and why subsection K preserves your rights if the owner does not.

None of that is a reason to skip the notice. You rarely know on day one which of these applies, and the notice costs a stamp.

Questions people ask

Once the job is running and you are getting paid on it, the paperwork that comes next is the waiver: see the Arizona statutory lien waiver forms, and conditional vs unconditional lien waiver for which of the two to sign.