Illinois Mechanics Lien Deadline Calculator, Where Being Late Is Never a Yes or a No
Every other state in this group of calculators answers am I late with a yes or a no. Illinois cannot, because section 7(a) gives one act two deadlines. Recording your claim for lien is good against any other creditor, incumbrancer or purchaser only within four months of completion, and good as to the owner for two years. Miss the four months and you have not lost the lien, you have lost the construction lender, which on most jobs is the party with the money. So the honest question here is not am I late, it is late for what, and this page answers it with two separate rows rather than one date. Two more things make Illinois its own shape. A subcontractor has two notices that run off two different events, and reading the ninety days off the wrong one is the single most common way the lien goes. And section 34 lets a written letter collapse two years into thirty days, with forfeiture at the end of it, on a day nobody scheduled. Put your dates in and the page counts every clock that is actually running, and tells you plainly which ones are not yours to worry about.
Worked example
These are the figures the calculator opens with and the answer it gives. Change anything above and every number below moves with it.
- Who you contracted withThe contractor
- The propertyAn existing owner-occupied home
- Days since you FIRST furnished anything here55 days
- Your 60 day notice to the occupantNot sent yet
- Your own contract on this jobFinished
- Days since YOUR OWN contract was completed35 days
- The contract with the ownerFinished
- Days since THAT contract was completed25 days
- Your claim for lien at the recorderNot recorded yet
- Days since you recorded it4 days
- A written demand that you sueNone served on me
- Days since that demand was served on you9 days
- Days of slack you want before the deadline7 days
Days left to notify the occupant5 days
The occupant notice has a form as well as a deadline, and a notice that misses the form is not a notice. Section 21(c) requires the name and address of the subcontractor or material supplier, the date you started to work or to deliver materials, the type of work done and to be done, and the name of the contractor who requested the work. It then requires the NOTICE TO OWNER warning set out in the statute, in at least 10 point bold face type, telling the homeowner that a lien waiver will be provided to the contractor when you are paid and urging the homeowner to ask for it. Send it to the occupant, personally or by certified mail with return receipt requested.
Your ninety days and the job's four months are running off two different dates and this page is counting them separately on purpose. Section 24(a) gives you ninety days after the completion of your own contract with the contractor, while section 7(a) gives four months after the completion of the contract with the owner. You finished 35 days ago and the job finished 25 days ago. Reading your notice deadline off the job's completion is the most common way a subcontractor loses this, because the job always finishes later and the later date always feels like the safe one.
Pay if paid is not a defense to what you are doing here, and the statute says so in its own words. Section 21(e) provides that any provision in a contract, agreement, or understanding conditioning payment from a contractor to a subcontractor or supplier upon receipt of payment from any other party, including a private or public owner, shall not be a defense by the party responsible for payment to a claim brought under Section 21, 22, 23, or 28. A subcontractor who has been told to wait until the general contractor gets paid is exactly the reader who lets a ninety day clock run out while waiting politely.
Section 22 puts a five day clock on you that nobody can see coming. As often as requested in writing by the owner or the contractor or the agent of either, you must make out a statement of the persons furnishing labor, services, material, fixtures, apparatus or machinery, giving their names and how much is due or to become due to each, under oath if required. Fail to furnish it within 5 days after the demand and you forfeit fifty dollars for every offense, you have no right of action against either owner or contractor until you furnish it, and your lien becomes subject to the liens of all other creditors. Furnishing it late restores the right of action, so the cure is a piece of paper, but the demand can arrive on any day and this page cannot predict it.
You are inside the slack you asked for. You set 7 days and the next thing due is 5 days out, so treat it as due now rather than as due later. Every Illinois deadline on this page is satisfied by an act somebody else has to receive or record, and a recorder's counter, a certified mail window and a process server all keep their own hours. The slack is there to absorb those, not to be spent waiting.
Two things this page deliberately does not cover, because both can decide the case. Public work is not here: section 23 creates a claim against public funds with its own notice periods and its own recipients, and nothing on this page applies to a job for a state, county, township, city or school district. And section 25 is named inside section 28 as one of the sections a subcontractor's notice may be served under, and it was not read for this page, so if your situation turns on section 25 rather than section 24, get it read before you rely on any date here.
| Your position under the Act | subcontractor, 60/21you contracted with the contractor, so sections 21 and 24 put two notices on you that a contractor never owes, and section 28 then gives you the contractor's own recording and suit deadlines on top |
|---|---|
| Notify the occupant, day 60 | 5 days leftsixty days from your first furnishing, served on the occupant personally or by certified mail, and it has to carry the NOTICE TO OWNER warning in 10 point bold face type |
| The 90 day notice, day 90 | 55 days leftto the owner of record or the owner's agent or architect or the superintendent, and to the lending agency if known, by certified mail or a tracked carrier or personal service |
| Record it, against a lender | 95 days leftfour months, which is what protects the claim against any other creditor or incumbrancer or purchaser under section 7(a), and it is the date the trade means by the deadline |
| Record it, against the owner | 705 days leftas against the owner only, under the second half of section 7(a), and a claim filed in this window can still be amended at any time before the final judgment |
| Tell the owner you recorded | not yours to givesection 7(d) says in terms that this subsection does not apply to subcontractors |
| File suit to enforce it | 705 days leftsuit commenced or counterclaim filed in the circuit court of the county where the improvement is, and section 28 makes a subcontractor sue the contractor and the owner jointly |
| If a demand to sue lands | 30 days, then forfeitsection 34 lets the owner, a lienor, the recorder, or any person interested in the real estate demand in writing that you sue, and the demand itself must warn you in 10 point bold face type |
| What a late notice costs | dollars, not daysboth Illinois partial losses are measured in the owner's money, section 21(c) by payments made before receipt and section 7(d) by damages suffered before notice, so no date on this page can price either one |
What this calculator assumes
- Illinois gives one act two deadlines, which is why this page prints two dates for recording instead of one. Section 7(a) says no contractor shall be allowed to enforce the lien against or to the prejudice of any other creditor or incumbrancer or purchaser unless within 4 months after completion he brings an action or files a claim for lien, and then says the same claim may be filed as to the owner at any time within 2 years after the completion of the contract. A claim recorded in month six is not void. It is good against the owner and worthless against the bank and against anybody who bought the property, so the honest question is never whether you are late, it is late for what.
- Two years is also the suit deadline, off the same event. Section 9 closes with the sentence that such suit shall be commenced or counterclaim filed within two years after the completion of the contract, or completion of the extra or additional work. Section 28 gives subcontractors the same limits as to time as section 7 and sections 9 to 20 give the contractor, so a subcontractor does not get his own set of dates for recording or for suing. The 90 day notice is an extra step on top of them.
- Four months is a span of calendar months, not a count of days. Four consecutive months run 120 days at the short end and 123 at the long end, so this page works to the 120 and says out loud when you are inside the band where only a calendar can answer. Two years is 730 days, or 731 when a February 29 falls inside it. The only date you can rely on is the one you count off your own completion date on a calendar.
- Section 34 is the reason a two year deadline can become a thirty day deadline without anything happening on the job. On written demand of the owner, a lienor, a recorder, or any person interested in the real estate, suit shall be commenced or answer filed within 30 days thereafter, or the lien shall be forfeited. The word is forfeited, not reduced. Subsection (a) counts from the service described in its own sentence and subsection (b) requires the demand itself to warn of 30 days after receipt, so the two subsections are worded differently and this page counts from service, which is the earlier of the two readings.
- The two notices a subcontractor owes run off different events and neither one excuses the other. The 90 day notice under section 24 runs from the completion of the subcontractor's own contract with the contractor, not from the completion of the job, and those two dates are routinely months apart. The 60 day notice under section 21(c) runs from the subcontractor's first furnishing, which is the front of the job and is the one most likely to have expired while the reader still feels early.
- A late notice in Illinois costs money rather than days, and no calculator can tell you how much. Section 21(c) says a notice given after 60 days shall preserve the subcontractor's lien, but only to the extent that the owner has not been prejudiced by payments made prior to receipt of the notice. Section 7(d) says a contractor who misses the 10 day notice after recording loses the lien to the extent of the damages the owner suffered before notice was given. Both of those are dollar figures that depend on what the homeowner paid and when, so this page tells you to send the notice today and does not pretend to price it.
- Two mailbox rules are in your favor here and one of them is unusually generous. Section 24(a) says notice shall be considered served at the time the written notice is placed with the delivery service or in the mail, and section 21(c) says notice by certified mail is considered served at the time of its mailing. Section 7(d) says its notice is served when it is sent or personally delivered. So on all three of these, the day you put it in the mail is the day it counts, and the recorder's counter hours are the only real cut off left.
One act, two deadlines, and why late is the wrong word
Section 7(a) is a single sentence doing two jobs. The first half says no contractor shall be allowed to enforce the lien against or to the prejudice of any other creditor or incumbrancer or purchaser unless within four months after completion he brings an action or files a claim for lien. The second half says that as to the owner the same claim may be filed at any time within two years after the completion of the contract.
So the four months is not the life of your lien. It is the life of your priority against everybody who is not the owner, and the list the statute gives is wide: any other creditor, any incumbrancer, any purchaser. On a financed job the incumbrancer is the construction lender holding the mortgage, and the lender is usually the only party with money left by the time a lien fight starts. Losing to the lender is most of what losing means here.
What that changes in practice is the advice you get on day 130. In a state with one deadline the answer is that it is over. In Illinois the answer is that recording today is still worth doing, it is simply worth a great deal less than it would have been on day 100, and it stays worth doing for another twenty months. This page prints both rows for exactly that reason, and it will not let the headline send you to a lawyer while the cheaper act is still open to you.
Two details inside the same subsection are worth knowing. Extra or additional work restarts the four months from the completion of that extra work, which is how a punch list quietly buys you time you did not think you had. And the claim may be filed at any time after the contract is made, so there is no waiting period at the front. If you are nervous, record early.
770 ILCS 60/7(a)No contractor shall be allowed to enforce such lien against or to the prejudice of any other creditor or incumbrancer or purchaser, unless within 4 months after completion, or if extra or additional work is done or labor, services, material, fixtures, apparatus or machinery, forms or form work is delivered therefor within 4 months after the completion of such extra or additional work or the final delivery of such extra or additional labor, services, material, fixtures, apparatus or machinery, forms or form work, he or she shall either bring an action to enforce his or her lien therefor or shall file in the office of the recorder of the county in which the building, erection or other improvement to be charged with the lien is situated, a claim for lien, verified by the affidavit of himself or herself, or his or her agent or employee, which shall consist of a brief statement of the claimant's contract, the balance due after allowing all credits, and a sufficiently correct description of the lot, lots or tracts of land to identify the same. Such claim for lien may be filed at any time after the claimant's contract is made, and as to the owner may be filed at any time after the contract is made and within 2 years after the completion of the contract, or the completion of any extra work or the furnishing of any extra labor, services, material, fixtures, apparatus or machinery, forms or form work thereunder, and as to such owner may be amended at any time before the final judgment.
Read the two halves separately. Four months is your priority against a lender. Two years is your claim against the owner. They are the same filing.
The subcontractor's two dates, which is how the notice is usually missed
If you were hired by the contractor rather than by the owner, you have a ninety day notice under section 24 and it does not run off the same day as anything else on this page. The statute says within ninety days after the completion thereof, and thereof points back to his or her contract with the contractor. Your contract, not the job.
The four months in section 7 runs off the completion of the contract with the owner. On a real project those two dates are routinely months apart. The framer finishes in March and the building is completed in August. If that framer reads his ninety days off August he is a hundred and fifty days late on a notice he thought he had time for, and the notice is the thing that makes a subcontractor lien enforceable at all.
The later date always looks like the safe one, which is why this calculator asks for both and keeps them in separate fields. Nothing else on the page is worth getting right if this one is wrong.
The service rule is generous and worth using. Notice is considered served at the time the written notice is placed with the delivery service or in the mail, so what you need is a deposit inside the window, not a delivery inside it. Registered or certified mail with return receipt, a nationally recognized delivery company with tracking, or personal service are the three routes the statute names, and the point of all three is a date you can prove.
Section 24(b) also makes the decision easy. Serving the notice does not create liability where none existed and does not by itself make you liable to anybody, so there is no downside to serving it on a job where you are not sure you will need it.
770 ILCS 60/24(a)Subcontractors, or parties furnishing labor, materials, fixtures, apparatus, machinery, or services, may at any time after making his or her contract with the contractor, and shall within 90 days after the completion thereof, or, if extra or additional work or material is delivered thereafter, within 90 days after the date of completion of such extra or additional work or final delivery of such extra or additional material, cause a written notice of his or her claim and the amount due or to become due thereunder, to be provided to the owner of record or the owner of record's agent or architect, or the superintendent having charge of the building or improvement and to the lending agency, if known, with the written notice to be sent by: (i) registered or certified mail, with return receipt requested; (ii) a nationally recognized delivery company with tracking service; or (iii) personal service. Notice shall be considered served at the time the written notice is placed with the delivery service or in the mail.
Completion thereof means completion of your contract with the contractor. It is not the completion date in section 7.
Two owner-occupied rules that both bite, on different jobs and different clocks
Illinois has two residential notices and people mix them up constantly, because they sound similar and do almost opposite things. They apply to different claimants, start on different events, and one is measured from a day you choose yourself.
The first is section 21(c). A subcontractor working on an existing owner-occupied single family residence has to notify the occupant within sixty days from that subcontractor's first furnishing. Note every word of the scope. Subcontractor, so a contractor who dealt with the owner directly does not owe it. Existing, so a newly built house the owner moved into afterwards is outside it. Single family residence, so a duplex or a commercial building is outside it too. And it runs from your first day on the job, which is the only clock in the Act that starts at the front rather than the end.
The second is section 7(d), and it goes the other way. A contractor for improvements of an owner-occupied single family residence must give the owner written notice within ten days after recording a lien. The subsection says in terms that it does not apply to subcontractors. This is the only deadline in the Act that you start yourself, with your own hand, on the day you choose to record, which means it is also the only one you can never be ambushed by. Write that notice before you go to the recorder.
What both of them have in common is the thing no calculator can compute for you. Missing either one does not extinguish the lien outright. A late section 21(c) notice still preserves the lien, but only to the extent that the owner has not been prejudiced by payments made before receipt. A late section 7(d) notice extinguishes the lien to the extent of the damages the owner suffered, and the statute adds that the mere recording of the lien claim is not damages. Both losses are measured in dollars that depend on what the owner paid out and when, so the page tells you the date and is honest that the price is not a number it can know.
770 ILCS 60/21(c)It shall be the duty of each subcontractor who has furnished, or is furnishing, labor, services, material, fixtures, apparatus or machinery, or forms or form work for an existing owner-occupied single family residence, in order to preserve the subcontractor's lien, to notify the occupant either personally or by certified mail, return receipt requested, addressed to the occupant or the occupant's agent of the residence within 60 days from the subcontractor's first furnishing labor, services, material, fixtures, apparatus or machinery, or forms or form work, that the subcontractor is supplying labor, services, material, fixtures, apparatus or machinery, or forms or form work provided, however, that any notice given after 60 days by the subcontractor shall preserve the subcontractor's lien, but only to the extent that the owner has not been prejudiced by payments made prior to receipt of the notice.
A late notice here costs you dollars, not the lien. How many dollars depends on what the owner paid out before it arrived.
Section 34, the deadline that arrives by letter
Everything else on this page is a clock you can see coming. Section 34 is not. On the written demand of the owner, a lienor, a recorder under section 3-5010.8 of the Counties Code, or any person interested in the real estate, suit has to be commenced or an answer filed within thirty days, or the lien shall be forfeited.
Read who can send it. Any person interested in the real estate is a wide class, and it means the demand does not have to come from the person you are arguing with. A buyer trying to close, a lender refinancing, another lien claimant who wants the title cleared, any of them can start your thirty days. Nothing about the job changes when the letter arrives. The deadline simply exists now.
The consequence word is forfeited, not reduced. This is the only total loss anywhere on this page, which is why the calculator drops everything else and leads with it the moment you tell it a demand has been served. The remedy is not a notice you can post, it is a lawsuit, or an answer in a suit already running, and thirty days is not long to find a lawyer and get a complaint on file.
There is a wrinkle in how the two subsections count, and it matters enough to say out loud. Subsection (a) says suit shall be commenced within thirty days after the demand is served on you. Subsection (b) requires the demand itself to warn of forfeiture for failure to respond within thirty days after receipt. Service and receipt are not always the same day, particularly by certified mail. This page counts from service, because that is the earlier of the two readings and the only one that is safe to build a deadline on.
770 ILCS 60/34(a)Upon written demand of the owner, lienor, a recorder under Section 3-5010.8 of the Counties Code, or any person interested in the real estate, or their agent or attorney, served on the person claiming the lien, or his agent or attorney, requiring suit to be commenced to enforce the lien or answer to be filed in a pending suit, suit shall be commenced or answer filed within 30 days thereafter, or the lien shall be forfeited. Such service may be by registered or certified mail, return receipt requested, or by personal service.
Forfeited. Not shortened, not reduced. Thirty days from service and the lien is gone whatever the job's own dates say.
Suit, the two year outer edge, and what this page does not cover
Section 9 sets the outside of everything. Suit to enforce the lien has to be commenced or a counterclaim filed within two years after the completion of the contract, or completion of the extra or additional work, or furnishing of extra or additional material. That is the same measuring event as section 7, so the two year recording window and the two year suit window close together.
Four months and two years are calendar spans, not day counts, and the difference is real at the edges. Four consecutive calendar months run a hundred and twenty days at the short end and a hundred and twenty three at the long end depending on which months they are. Two years is seven hundred and thirty days, or seven hundred and thirty one when a leap day falls inside the span. This calculator works to the short end of each and refuses to print a day count once you are inside the band, because at that point only a calendar knows and the answer is to go and look at one.
There is also a section this page does not compute and should not pretend to. Section 23 covers liens against public funds, which is a different mechanism with different deadlines and different people to serve, and if your job is public work none of the dates here apply to you. Section 25 has its own rules on distribution among claimants. Both are named here so you know to go and read them rather than assuming silence means they do not exist.
One more that is not a date at all. Section 21(e) says a contract to improve property is not invalid because it makes the contractor's payment to a subcontractor conditional on the owner paying the contractor, so pay-if-paid clauses are enforceable in Illinois as between those parties. That does not move any deadline on this page, but it does change who you are really chasing, and the lien is often the only route that does not depend on the contractor getting paid first.
770 ILCS 60/9Such suit shall be commenced or counterclaim filed within two years after the completion of the contract, or completion of the extra or additional work, or furnishing of extra or additional material thereunder.
Same measuring event as section 7, so the two year windows for recording and for suing close at the same time.
Questions people ask
I am past four months from completion. Is my Illinois lien dead?
No, and this is the part of the Illinois Act that surprises people. Section 7(a) gives the recording two separate deadlines. Four months protects you against any other creditor, incumbrancer or purchaser, which in practice means the construction lender. Two years protects you as to the owner. Past four months you have lost the first and still have the second, so recording today is worth doing and remains worth doing for the rest of the two years. What you have lost is priority against the lender, which on a financed job is usually where the recoverable money sits. Record it anyway, and understand that the negotiating position is weaker than it would have been.
My ninety day notice and the job's four months seem to be different dates. Which one do I use?
Both, for different things. The ninety days in section 24 runs from the completion of your own contract with the contractor who hired you. The four months in section 7 runs from the completion of the contract with the owner, which is the whole job. Those are routinely months apart, and the job's date is always the later and more comfortable looking one. Using it for your notice is the most common way a subcontractor loses an Illinois lien. Put both dates into the calculator separately and it will count them separately.
A letter arrived demanding that I file suit. How long do I really have?
Thirty days, and at the end of it the lien is forfeited rather than merely shortened. Section 34 lets the owner, another lien claimant, the recorder or any person interested in the real estate serve a written demand requiring suit to be commenced or an answer filed, and thirty days later the lien is gone. Nothing about the job's own dates matters once that letter is served. Subsection (a) counts from service and subsection (b) speaks of thirty days after receipt, which are not always the same day, so this page counts from service because that is the earlier and safer reading. Treat the letter as the most urgent thing on your desk.
Do I have to notify the occupant on a house, or the owner after I record, or both?
It depends entirely on which side of the contract you are on, and most people owe exactly one of them. Section 21(c) is a subcontractor duty on an existing owner-occupied single family residence, running sixty days from your first furnishing. Section 7(d) is a contractor duty on an owner-occupied single family residence, running ten days after you record, and it says in terms that it does not apply to subcontractors. So a subcontractor on a homeowner's remodel owes the sixty day occupant notice and not the ten day one, and a contractor who dealt with the homeowner directly owes the ten day one and not the sixty. The calculator asks who hired you first, and then only counts the rows you actually owe.
What does a late notice actually cost me in Illinois?
Dollars, and the statute does not tell you how many. A late section 21(c) occupant notice still preserves the lien, but only to the extent that the owner has not been prejudiced by payments made before the notice was received. A late section 7(d) notice extinguishes the lien to the extent of the damages the owner suffered, with the statute adding that the mere recording of the lien claim is not damages. Both depend on what the owner paid out and when, which is information you do not have and no calculator can supply. That is why this page gives you the date and then says plainly that the price is measured in money rather than days. Serve it today either way, because every payment the owner makes before it arrives makes the number worse.
Does this calculator cover public projects?
No. Liens against public funds run under section 23 of the Act, which is a different mechanism with its own deadlines and its own list of people to serve, and none of the dates on this page apply to it. If your job is for a public body, stop here and read section 23. The same warning applies to section 25, which deals with distribution among claimants and has rules of its own. Both are named on this page so that silence is not mistaken for coverage.
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