Mississippi Construction Lien Deadline Calculator, Including the Two Pre-Lien Notices That Never Both Apply
Mississippi runs two pre-lien notices and they never both apply to the same job. Which one you owe is decided by the building rather than by your trade, which is why so many claimants send the wrong document and find out afterwards. Section 85-7-407(2) gives anyone without privity of contract with the contractor thirty days from first delivery to notify the contractor in writing, and the last sentence of the subsection says failure forfeits the right to a lien under this article. Not shortens it, forfeits it. Then subsection (4) takes that whole section off single-family residential construction, and section 85-7-409(2) fills the gap from the other side with a ten day pre-lien notice to the owner, single-family only, which it calls a condition precedent. So a commercial job has a thirty day notice to the contractor and no ten day notice, and a house has a ten day notice to the owner and no thirty day notice. The second trap is a definition. Section 85-7-401(i) says residential property means single-family and two-family, three-family and four-family real estate, and then neither of the two sections that matter uses that defined term: both say single-family residential construction instead. On the words, a duplex sits outside both exceptions, which puts it under the thirty day notice and not the ten day one. After the notices the arithmetic is unusually simple: ninety days from your own last work to file with the chancery clerk, for everybody, with no substantial completion trigger anywhere in the article, then one hundred eighty days from the filing to commence the payment action, which the other side can cut to ninety by recording a notice of contest. Put your dates in and the page tells you which of these is your problem today.
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 signed with on this jobA subcontractor or a supplier, not the contractor
- What is being built or repairedCommercial, industrial or anything not a home
- Days since your last work, services or materials40 days
- Days since your FIRST delivery to this project70 days
- The 30 day notice to the contractor, 85-7-407(2)Not sent
- The pre-lien notice to the owner, 85-7-409(2)Not sent
- If you sent it, days since you sent it3 days
- Your claim of lien at the chancery clerkNot filed yet
- If you filed it, days since you filed20 days
- The bold expiration line AND the notice to ownerBoth are on the face of the lien
- Copy of the lien out within two business daysSent inside two business days
- Has a notice of contest of lien been recordedNo, nothing recorded
- If one was recorded, days since it was filed10 days
- The payment action and the lis pendensNot started
- The day of the week your last work fell onNot sure
- Warn me when a deadline is this close7 days
Your lien right on this jobgone, 85-7-407(2)
The thirty day notice under 85-7-407(2) is the end of this page and not a step in it. You first delivered here 70 days ago, so the thirty days closed 40 days ago with nothing sent. The subsection says the claimant shall thereby forfeit his right to a lien under this article. Three things are still worth doing today. Check whether the date you have given as first delivery is really the first delivery to THIS property under this account, because the subsection counts from the first one and not from the current phase. Check who the contractor actually is, since 85-7-401(b) defines him as the person in privity with the owner or lessee and 85-7-407(2) only reaches people who lack privity with that person. And check whether the job is single-family residential construction, because 85-7-407(4) takes the whole section off it. If none of those help, the debt is still owed and the lien is what you have lost.
One field is still blank and it is the only one arithmetic cannot fill in. Section 85-7-425 sends the computation of time for this whole article to Section 1-3-67, which excludes the day the clock started, includes the last day, and then runs the period on to the next open day if the last one is a Saturday, a Sunday, a legal holiday, or any other day when the courthouse or the clerk's office is in fact closed, whether with or without legal authority. Tell the page which day of the week your last work fell on and it will say where day ninety lands. Whatever it says, treat a roll forward as a cushion and not as time, because a legal holiday or a closed courthouse can move it further and this page has no calendar.
This page counts days from what you typed and nothing else. It does not know whether you are in privity of contract with the contractor for the purposes of 85-7-407(2), whether the building is single-family residential construction, whether a delivery belongs to the same account as an earlier one, or what your contract says. Mississippi gives no second chances on either notice: 85-7-407(2) forfeits the lien and 85-7-409(2) calls its notice a condition precedent. Use these dates to book the conversation early rather than to decide you have time.
| Your lien right, before any date | gone, no 30 day noticeSection 85-7-407(2) ends by saying that if the person not in privity of contract with the contractor fails to provide the required notice to the contractor, he shall thereby forfeit his right to a lien under this article. Forfeit, not shorten. The article gives no cure, no substantial compliance and no discretion, and the thirty days ran from your first delivery rather than from anything that happened later. |
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| Which day the clock counts from | your own last daySection 85-7-405(1)(b) counts ninety days after the claimant's last work performed, labor, services or materials provided, the furnishing of architectural services, or the furnishing or performing of surveying or engineering services. That is the whole trigger. There is no substantial completion date in this article, no notice of completion the owner can record to start your clock early, and no separate rule for a contractor, so the only date that matters is the last one you can prove on this project. |
| The 30 day notice, 85-7-407(2) | 40 days pastSection 85-7-407(2) gives thirty days following the FIRST delivery of labor, services or materials to the property, not thirty days from the invoice and not thirty days from your last visit. You have said you first delivered here 70 days ago. The notice goes to the contractor, or to the owner if there is no contractor, and not to both unless you want it to. |
| The pre-lien notice, 85-7-409(2) | not required, not single-familySection 85-7-409 opens with the words 'As to single-family residential construction only', so on a commercial job, and on a duplex, triplex or fourplex, there is no ten day pre-lien notice at all. What applies instead is the thirty day notice to the contractor in 85-7-407(2), and the row above says whether you owe it. |
| Filing the claim of lien, day 90 | 50 days leftSection 85-7-405(1)(b) gives ninety days after your last work to file the claim of lien for record with the clerk of the chancery court of the county where the property is located. Section 85-7-405(1) opens by saying the lien must be created and declared in accordance with its provisions, and on failure of any of them the lien shall not be effective or enforceable, so the date and the wording carry the same weight as each other. |
| If the last day lands on a closed day | tell the page the weekdaySection 85-7-425 says the computation of time under this article shall be determined pursuant to Section 1-3-67, and 1-3-67 rolls the last day of a period forward off a Saturday, a Sunday, a legal holiday, or any other day when the courthouse or the clerk's office is in fact closed, whether with or without legal authority. Tell the page which day of the week your last work fell on and it will say where day ninety lands. It is the only fact on this page that arithmetic cannot supply. |
| The copy out, two business days | after you fileSection 85-7-405(1)(b) gives two business days after the claim of lien is filed of record to send a true and accurate copy by registered or certified mail or statutory overnight delivery to the owner, or to the contractor as the owner's agent if the owner's address cannot be found. If you are not the contractor you also send a copy to the contractor inside the same two days. Section 85-7-401(a) defines a business day as any day that is not a Saturday, a Sunday or a legal holiday. |
| The payment action, 180 or 90 | starts when you fileSection 85-7-405(1)(c)(i) gives one hundred eighty days from the date of filing the claim of lien to commence a payment action in county, circuit or chancery court, with a lis pendens filed at the same time and a copy to the owner and the contractor. Section 85-7-401(d) is wider than it looks: a payment action means a lawsuit, a proof of claim in a bankruptcy case, or a binding arbitration, so if the party you contracted with has filed for bankruptcy, the proof of claim is itself the action. |
| What the other side can still do | nothing yetBefore you file, the risk that matters is 85-7-413. The lien is dissolved and unenforceable if the owner, a purchaser or a lender shows that payment was released in reliance on a lien waiver you issued under 85-7-419, or on a contractor's sworn written statement that you have been paid or have waived in writing. Section 85-7-419(1) protects you at the front end, because a waiver signed in advance of furnishing labor, services or materials is null, void and unenforceable, but a waiver signed for an interim payment you never actually received is a different problem and 85-7-407(3) is the answer to it. |
What this calculator assumes
- Mississippi runs two pre-lien notices that never both apply, and which one you owe is decided by the building rather than by your trade. Section 85-7-407(2) gives anyone without privity of contract with the contractor thirty days from first delivery to notify the contractor in writing, and failure forfeits the lien. Section 85-7-407(4) then says the whole of that section does not apply to single-family residential construction. Section 85-7-409(2) covers the gap from the other side: as to single-family residential construction only, a claimant not in privity with the owner must give the owner a pre-lien notice at least ten days before filing. So a commercial job has a thirty day notice to the contractor and no ten day notice, and a single-family house has a ten day notice to the owner and no thirty day notice.
- A duplex is not a single-family house here, and the article is unusually easy to misread on the point. Section 85-7-401(i) defines 'Residential property' to mean single-family AND two-family, three-family and four-family residential real estate. Neither 85-7-407(4) nor 85-7-409 uses that defined term. Both of them say 'single-family residential construction' instead. On the words of the statute a two to four family building sits outside both exceptions, which means the thirty day notice in 85-7-407(2) applies to it and the ten day pre-lien notice in 85-7-409(2) does not.
- The ten day pre-lien notice on a single-family job comes out of the ninety days, because the statute gives it no window of its own. Section 85-7-409(2) makes it a condition precedent and requires it at least ten days before filing a claim of lien under 85-7-405, and 85-7-405(1)(b) closes the filing at ninety days after your last work. So the last day on which sending it still leaves you able to file is day eighty, and no section of the article says so. The same notice does a second job under 85-7-409(1): until the owner has it, every dollar the owner pays the contractor is an absolute defense against your lien to the extent of the payment.
- The statutory Notice of Contest of Lien form and the subsection it belongs to do not agree with each other, and this page follows the subsection. Section 85-7-423(3) says the lien is extinguished upon the earlier of ninety days after the FILING of the notice of contest or one hundred eighty days from the date of lien filing. The form printed at 85-7-433(4) tells the claimant twice that the time is ninety days from RECEIPT of the notice. Section 85-7-423(2) allows the contesting party seven days to mail it and deems service complete on mailing, so the form can promise a week that the operative subsection does not give. Counting from the filing is the shorter of the two readings and it is the one written into the statute rather than into a form.
- This calculator counts days from what you type. It does not decide whether you are in privity of contract with the contractor within the meaning of 85-7-401 and 85-7-407(2), whether a particular building is single-family residential construction, whether a delivery belongs to the same account as an earlier one, or whether the work you did is the kind that supports a lien at all. Those are the questions a Mississippi construction lawyer earns a fee answering, and the dates below are what you take to that conversation rather than a substitute for it.
Ninety days for everybody, counted from your own last day and from nothing else
Section 85-7-405(1)(b) is the filing deadline and it is the same for every claimant in the article. Ninety days. There is no longer window for the contractor, no shorter one for a supplier, no residential variant and no equipment rental rule. A general contractor who signed with the owner and a second tier supplier who never met him are counting the same ninety days from their own last item of work.
What Mississippi does not have is more useful than what it has. There is no substantial completion trigger anywhere in this article. Nothing the owner records starts your clock, and no notice of completion can be filed to shorten it. In Wyoming an owner who is ahead of schedule can start your filing window while you are still doing punch work, and in California a recorded notice of completion cuts ninety days to thirty. Mississippi has neither device. Your ninety days run from your last work performed, labor, services or materials provided, and from that alone.
That makes one question carry all the weight, and it is a question the statute does not answer. Whether a later visit belongs to the same account as the earlier work, or starts a new one, decides your trigger date. A genuine punch list item on the same contract is usually the last day. A warranty callback six months after you demobilized usually is not, and a small delivery made to reset the clock is the oldest bad idea in construction lien practice. If your two candidate dates are far apart, the gap is a question for a Mississippi construction lawyer rather than for arithmetic, and this page counts from whichever date you give it.
The filing itself goes in the office of the clerk of the chancery court of the county where the property is located, not with the circuit clerk and not at the courthouse in the county where you are based. Section 85-7-405(1) opens by saying the lien must be created and declared in accordance with its provisions and that on failure of any of them the lien shall not be effective or enforceable, so the place and the wording carry exactly as much weight as the date does.
Mississippi Code section 85-7-405(1)(b)The filing for record of the claim of lien in the office of the clerk of the chancery court of the county where the property is located within ninety (90) days after the claimant's last work performed, labor, services or materials provided, the furnishing of architectural services, or the furnishing or performing of surveying or engineering services.
One number for every claimant, counted from one event. Read the sentence for what it leaves out as much as for what it says: there is no substantial completion date in it, no owner recorded notice that can move it, and no separate figure for a contractor.
The thirty day notice that forfeits the lien, and the subsection that takes it off a house
Section 85-7-407(2) is the hardest rule in the article and it is easy to read past. Any person with a right to a lien under section 85-7-403 who does not have privity of contract with the contractor has thirty days following the first delivery of labor, services or materials to the property to give the contractor written notice. The subsection then ends with a sentence that gives the whole article its character: failure to provide it forfeits the right to a lien. There is no late version that shortens the lien instead, no substantial compliance, no cure and no discretion.
Three things about the trigger catch people out. It runs from first delivery, not from the last one and not from the invoice, so by the time you know the money is late the window has usually closed. It runs from first delivery to the property, which on a long account means the first delivery under that account rather than the first delivery of the current phase. And it does not restart when the contract is amended or when a new purchase order is issued against the same job.
Then subsection (4) does something that changes the shape of the whole calculation. It says the provisions of this section do not apply to single-family residential construction. The whole section, not just the notice. So on a house the thirty day notice does not exist, the forfeiture in subsection (2) cannot bite, and the two forfeitures in subsection (1) against a contractor who refuses to list his subcontractors or fails to pay them do not bite either. In their place section 85-7-409 puts a different notice on a different person with a different count, and the next part of this page is about that one.
One reading of subsection (2) is sharper than most articles about Mississippi liens acknowledge, and this page follows it. The test in the subsection is privity with the contractor, and the alternative limb, privity with the owner, only opens if there is no contractor. So a claimant who signed directly with the owner while somebody else is the contractor, which describes a design professional the owner hired and a trade engaged directly on a multi-prime job, lacks privity with the contractor and is not rescued by the second limb because a contractor exists. On those words the thirty day notice is owed. Sending it costs an email with a confirmed receipt. Not sending it, if that reading is right, costs the lien.
Mississippi Code section 85-7-407, the end of subsection (2) and the whole of subsection (4)If the person not in privity of contract with the contractor fails to provide the required notice to the contractor, he shall thereby forfeit his right to a lien under this article. The provisions of this section do not apply to single-family residential construction.
Two sentences, two pages apart, and together they decide whether you have a lien at all. The first is the forfeiture. The second is the reason a claimant on a house should not be looking for a thirty day deadline in the first place.
The ten day pre-lien notice on a house, and why day eighty is the real deadline
Section 85-7-409(2) applies as to single-family residential construction only, and only to a subcontractor, materialman or design professional not in privity with the owner. It calls the notice a condition precedent of any right to a special lien, which is a harder phrase than a notice requirement, and it wants the notice at the owner at least ten days before the claim of lien is filed under section 85-7-405.
Here is the number the statute never prints. The ten days have to run before the filing, and the filing closes on day ninety. So the last day on which sending the notice still leaves you able to file lawfully is day eighty. Miss day eighty and you are in a squeeze where both halves are individually open and cannot both be satisfied: you can still file inside the ninety, but not ten days after a notice you have not yet sent. No section of the article says day eighty. It falls out of two sections read together, and this calculator prints it because a claimant counting to ninety on a house is counting to the wrong number.
Subsection (1) is the reason not to wait for day eighty at all, and it is the part that costs money rather than rights. On single-family residential construction, payment made by or on behalf of the owner to the contractor for your work is an absolute defense to your claim of lien, to the extent of the payment actually made, but only to the extent the owner had not received your pre-lien notice before the payment. Every draw that goes out before your notice arrives is money you cannot reach afterwards, and nobody is obliged to tell you when the draws happen. The ten days in subsection (2) are the last lawful moment to send it. They are not the right moment.
The delivery rule here is looser than the one next door. Section 85-7-409(2) says the notice can be evidenced by any reliable means of delivery, where section 85-7-407(2) lists email with a confirmed receipt, registered or certified mail, or statutory overnight delivery and allows nothing else. Looser does not mean easier to prove. The burden of showing the owner had it, and had it in time, is still yours, and section 85-7-409(3) says the notice must be in substantially the form set out in section 85-7-433(5).
Mississippi Code section 85-7-409(2)As to single-family residential construction only, as a condition precedent of any right to a special lien under Section 85-7-403 in favor of a subcontractor, materialman or design professional not in privity with the owner, the claimant must provide the owner a pre-lien written notice at least ten (10) days before filing a claim of lien under Section 85-7-405, which can be evidenced by any reliable means of delivery.
At least ten days before filing, and the filing closes on day ninety. The subsection gives the notice no window of its own, which is how a ten day requirement turns into an eighty day deadline that appears nowhere in the Mississippi Code.
A duplex is not a single-family house, and the article defines a term it then refuses to use
Section 85-7-401 is the definitions section for this article and subsection (i) defines residential property to mean single-family and two-family, three-family and four-family residential real estate. It is a sensible definition. A fourplex is residential. The problem is that neither of the two sections that turn on the distinction uses it.
Section 85-7-407(4) says the provisions of this section do not apply to single-family residential construction. Section 85-7-409 opens, twice, with the words as to single-family residential construction only. Neither says residential property. Neither says residential construction. Both say single-family, a phrase the article never defines, in an article that went to the trouble of defining a broader term in its own first section and then left it on the shelf.
Read on the words, the consequence is clean and it is the position this page takes. A duplex, a triplex and a fourplex are residential property and are not single-family residential construction. So section 85-7-407 is not disapplied to them, which means a claimant without privity with the contractor owes the thirty day notice on a duplex. And section 85-7-409 does not reach them, which means there is no ten day pre-lien notice and no absolute defense for the owner who has paid the contractor.
The practical answer is cheaper than the argument. On a two to four family building, send both. The thirty day notice to the contractor costs an email with a confirmed receipt and the pre-lien notice to the owner can go by any reliable means. Sending a notice you did not owe has no downside anywhere in this article. Not sending one you did owe forfeits the lien under section 85-7-407(2), and that is the only asymmetry that matters when the words are this unsettled.
Mississippi Code section 85-7-401(i)"Residential property" means single-family and two-family, three-family, and four-family residential real estate.
The definition exists, it is broad, and the two sections that decide which notice you owe both decline to use it. That gap is where a duplex falls, and the calculator puts it under the thirty day notice because that is what the words of section 85-7-407(4) produce.
One hundred eighty days to sue, or ninety if the other side records a notice of contest
Filing the claim of lien starts a second clock. Section 85-7-405(1)(c)(i) requires a payment action to be commenced in county, circuit or chancery court within one hundred eighty days from the date of filing for record, and in the same sentence requires a lis pendens notice to be filed with the commencement of the action with a copy to the owner and the contractor. Section 85-7-421(1) says the same one hundred eighty days and states the consequence: failure to commence within them renders the claim of lien unenforceable.
What counts as commencing is wider than a lawsuit. Section 85-7-401(d) defines a payment action as a lawsuit, a proof of claim in a bankruptcy case, or a binding arbitration. So if the party who owes you has filed for bankruptcy, filing the proof of claim is itself the action, and if your contract has an arbitration clause, section 85-7-405(1)(c)(iii) confirms the paragraph does not prejudice the parties' contractual rights to arbitration. The lis pendens still has to go on record either way.
The other side can shorten the one hundred eighty days without your agreement. Section 85-7-423(1) lets the owner or the contractor, or an agent or attorney for either, record a notice of contest of lien in the chancery clerk's office with proof of delivery to you, in the form set out in section 85-7-433(4). Subsection (3) then extinguishes the lien upon the earlier of ninety days after the filing of that notice or one hundred eighty days from the date of lien filing. Extinguished by law, with no release required and nothing to revive.
And here the statute disagrees with its own form, which is the single most dangerous thing on this page. Section 85-7-423(3) counts the ninety days from the filing of the notice of contest. The form printed at section 85-7-433(4) tells the claimant twice that the time is ninety days from receipt of it. Subsection (2) gives the contesting party seven days to mail you a copy and says service shall be deemed complete upon mailing, so the document in your hand can appear to give you a week the operative subsection never gave. This calculator counts from the filing. It is the shorter reading, it is the one written into the subsection rather than into a form, and a claimant who counts from receipt and turns out to be wrong has lost the lien rather than an argument.
Mississippi Code section 85-7-423(3)The lien shall be extinguished by law upon the earlier of ninety (90) days after the filing of the notice of contest of lien, or one hundred eighty (180) days from the date of lien filing if no payment action is filed in that time period. No release or voiding of the liens shall be required. This subsection shall not be construed to extend the time in which a payment action must begin.
The filing of the notice of contest, not your receipt of it. Compare the statutory form at section 85-7-433(4), which says receipt, twice, in capital letters. When a form and the subsection it belongs to disagree, count the shorter one.
The words on the face of the lien, and the copy that goes out within two business days
Two sentences in this article invalidate a lien for what it says rather than for when it was filed, and between them they catch more Mississippi claimants than any date does. Section 85-7-405(1)(b) requires the claim of lien to include a statement about its expiration under section 85-7-421(1) and a notice to the owner that the owner has the right to contest the lien, and says the absence of the statement or notice shall invalidate the lien. Section 85-7-421(1) then repeats the point from its own side and adds a formatting requirement: the expiration statement must be on the face of the lien in at least 12 point bold font.
A lien missing its own wording is worse than no lien at all, because it sits on the record giving you a confidence you have not earned while the ninety days run out behind it. If you filed through a service or reused a form from another state, pull the recorded copy and read the face of it today. If your ninety days have not closed, the fix is a fresh claim of lien that is correct on its face, filed inside the original window, and that window is still counted from your last work rather than from the day you noticed the problem.
Section 85-7-415(3) adds a third requirement in the same family, tucked into the bond section where nobody looks for it: failing to specify both the amount claimed due under the lien and the date the claim was due results in the lien not constituting notice for any purposes. Two facts, both of which you have, both of which are easy to leave off a form.
Then the copy. No later than two business days after the claim of lien is filed of record, section 85-7-405(1)(b) requires a true and accurate copy to go to the owner by registered or certified mail or statutory overnight delivery, or to the contractor as the owner's agent if the owner's address cannot be found, and if you are not the contractor, a copy to the contractor as well inside the same two days. Section 85-7-401(a) defines a business day as any day that is not a Saturday, a Sunday or a legal holiday. The article attaches no stated consequence to sending it late, which is not the same as saying there is none, because section 85-7-405(1) opens by saying that on failure of any of these provisions the lien shall not be effective or enforceable. This page treats the copy as a step to get right rather than as a deadline that decides your headline, and if yours is late the answer is to send it today, keep the proof, and ask a lawyer whether the opening sentence reaches it.
Mississippi Code section 85-7-421(1)Failure of a lien claimant to commence a payment action to collect the amount of his or her claim within one hundred eighty (180) days from the date of filing the lien renders the claim of lien unenforceable. Any lien filed shall include on the face of the lien the following statement in at least 12 point bold font: "THIS CLAIM OF LIEN EXPIRES AND IS VOID ONE HUNDRED EIGHTY (180) DAYS FROM THE DATE OF FILING OF THE CLAIM OF LIEN IF A PAYMENT ACTION IS NOT FILED IN THAT TIME PERIOD." Failure to include the required language shall invalidate the lien and prevent it from being filed.
One subsection doing two jobs. The first sentence is the deadline to sue. The rest is a drafting requirement whose breach invalidates the lien, and the claim form printed at section 85-7-405(1)(b) carries a slightly longer version of the same sentence, so copy the wording from the section you are filing under.
The day the clerk is shut, and the one thing this page cannot work out for itself
Section 85-7-425 is one sentence long and it is the only one of its kind in this lane. It sends the computation of time under the whole article to section 1-3-67, the general Mississippi rule. No other state in this set of calculators writes a roll forward into its construction lien chapter.
Section 1-3-67 does three things. It excludes the day of the act or event the period runs from, so day one is the day after your last work. It includes the last day, unless that day is a Saturday, a Sunday, a legal holiday, or any other day when the courthouse or the clerk's office is in fact closed, whether with or without legal authority, in which case the period runs to the end of the next day that is open. And when the period prescribed is less than seven days, intermediate Saturdays, Sundays and legal holidays are excluded from the count, which is the rule that governs the two business day copy deadline in section 85-7-405(1)(b).
That is why this calculator asks which day of the week your last work fell on. It is the only fact on the page that arithmetic cannot supply from a day count, and with it the page can say whether day ninety lands on a weekend and where it rolls to. What it cannot do is know the legal holidays, and it certainly cannot know whether the chancery clerk's office in a particular county was shut on a particular afternoon, which is the phrase section 1-3-67 actually uses.
So the page prints the roll forward as information and not as time you have. There is a second reason for that beyond the holidays. Section 1-3-67 opens with the words when process shall be required to be served or notice given any number of days, which is framed around service and notice, while section 85-7-425 imports it for the computation of time under the article generally. The two sentences do not sit perfectly together, and a claimant who files on the Monday because a calculator told him the Saturday rolled is relying on that seam. File on the last working day before day ninety and the question never arises.
Mississippi Code section 85-7-425, and the operative words of section 1-3-67The computation of time under this article shall be determined pursuant to Section 1-3-67. The last day of the period so computed shall be included unless it is a Saturday, a Sunday or a legal holiday, or any other day when the courthouse or the clerk's office is in fact closed, whether with or without legal authority, in which event the period runs until the end of the next day which is not a Saturday, a Sunday, a legal holiday, or any other day when the courthouse or the clerk's office is closed.
Note the width of the phrase. Not a declared holiday, but any day the office is in fact closed, whether with or without legal authority. It is a protection against a clerk who shut early, and it is not a reason to arrive on the last day.
Questions people ask
Which notice do I owe, the thirty day one or the ten day one?
The building decides, not your trade. If the job is single-family residential construction, section 85-7-407(4) takes the thirty day notice off it entirely and section 85-7-409(2) puts a ten day pre-lien notice to the owner in its place, owed by a subcontractor, materialman or design professional who is not in privity with the owner. If the job is anything else, including commercial, industrial and, on the words of the statute, a duplex, then section 85-7-407(2) applies and you owe the thirty day notice to the contractor if you lack privity of contract with him. You never owe both on the same job, and the one you owe is the one whose absence costs you the lien.
I supply a subcontractor on an office fit-out and I never sent anything in the first thirty days. Is the lien really gone?
On the face of section 85-7-407(2), yes. The last sentence says the person shall thereby forfeit his right to a lien under this article, and the article gives no cure, no late version and no discretion. Three things are still worth checking before you write it off. Whether the date you are treating as first delivery is really the first delivery to that property under that account, since the subsection counts from the first and not from the current phase. Who the contractor actually is, since section 85-7-401(b) defines him as the person in privity with the owner or lessee and a construction manager is not automatically that person. And whether the job is single-family residential construction, which would take the whole section off it. The debt is still owed either way. What you have lost is the lien, not the claim.
The job is a duplex. Which side of the line is that?
On the words of the statute it is on the commercial side, which surprises people. Section 85-7-401(i) defines residential property to include two-family, three-family and four-family real estate, but neither section 85-7-407(4) nor section 85-7-409 uses that defined term. Both say single-family residential construction. A duplex is not single-family, so the thirty day notice in section 85-7-407(2) applies to it and the ten day pre-lien notice in section 85-7-409(2) does not. Because the drafting is unsettled, the cheap answer is to send both. A notice you did not owe costs a stamp. A notice you did owe and did not send costs the lien.
When exactly do my ninety days start?
From your last work performed, labor, services or materials provided on that project, under section 85-7-405(1)(b), and from nothing else. Mississippi has no substantial completion trigger in this article and there is no notice of completion an owner can record to start your clock early, which makes it simpler than Wyoming or California. The hard question is which visit counts as your last. A punch list item on the same contract usually does. A warranty callback months after you demobilized usually does not, and a small delivery arranged to restart the clock is the oldest bad idea in this area. If your two candidate dates are far apart, that gap is a question for a lawyer rather than for this page.
The owner keeps paying the general and I still have not been paid on a house. Does a lien fix that?
Only if your pre-lien notice got there first. Section 85-7-409(1) says that on single-family residential construction, payment made by or on behalf of the owner to the contractor for your work is an absolute defense to your claim of lien, to the extent of the payment actually made, but only to the extent the owner had not received your notice under subsection (2) before the payment. So the notice is not only a condition precedent to the lien, it is the tap that stops the money you could otherwise reach. Every draw released before your notice arrives is gone. This is the reason the ten days in subsection (2) are the last lawful moment to send it rather than the right moment.
My lien is recorded but I am not sure the bold expiration wording is on it.
Pull the recorded copy today and read the face of it. Section 85-7-405(1)(b) says the absence of the expiration statement or of the notice to the owner of the right to contest shall invalidate the lien, and section 85-7-421(1) says failure to include the required language shall invalidate the lien and prevent it from being filed, and requires at least 12 point bold font. Section 85-7-415(3) adds that failing to state both the amount claimed and the date it was due means the lien does not constitute notice for any purpose. If your ninety days under section 85-7-405(1)(b) have not closed, a fresh and correct claim of lien filed inside the original window is the fix, and that window still runs from your last work rather than from today.
I was served a notice of contest of lien. The form says ninety days from when I received it.
Read the form, then count from the filing instead. Section 85-7-423(3) extinguishes the lien upon the earlier of ninety days after the filing of the notice of contest or one hundred eighty days from your lien filing. The form at section 85-7-433(4) says ninety days from receipt, twice, in capitals. Section 85-7-423(2) gives the contesting party seven days to mail it to you and deems service complete upon mailing, so the form can appear to hand you a week the subsection never gave. This calculator counts from the filing because that is the operative subsection and because the cost of the two errors is not symmetrical: counting early costs you nothing, counting late costs you the lien.
What actually counts as commencing the payment action?
More than a lawsuit. Section 85-7-401(d) defines a payment action as a lawsuit, a proof of claim in a bankruptcy case, or a binding arbitration, so if the party who owes you has filed for bankruptcy the proof of claim is itself the action, and an arbitration clause does not leave you without a way to meet the deadline. Section 85-7-405(1)(c)(iii) says the paragraph does not prejudice the parties' contractual rights to arbitration. Whichever route you take, the same subparagraph requires a lis pendens notice to be filed with the commencement of the action, with a copy to the owner and the contractor, in the same sentence that sets the one hundred eighty days.
Day ninety falls on a Saturday. Do I get the Monday?
Probably, and you should not rely on it. Section 85-7-425 sends the computation of time for this article to section 1-3-67, which runs the period to the end of the next day that is not a Saturday, a Sunday, a legal holiday, or any other day the courthouse or the clerk's office is in fact closed. Two reasons to treat that as a cushion rather than as time. This page has no calendar of Mississippi legal holidays and no way to know a county office shut early, both of which section 1-3-67 covers. And section 1-3-67 opens with words about service of process and the giving of notice, while section 85-7-425 imports it for the computation of time generally, a seam nobody wants to be standing on. File on the last working day before day ninety.
Does this calculator give me legal advice or tell me whether my lien is any good?
No to both. It applies the dates in the sections it names to the dates you enter, and it shows the arithmetic so you can check it. It cannot tell you whether you are in privity of contract with the contractor for the purposes of section 85-7-407(2), whether a particular building is single-family residential construction, whether a delivery belongs to the same account as an earlier one, what your contract says, or whether the work you did supports a lien at all. Mississippi gives no second chances on either notice, because section 85-7-407(2) forfeits the lien and section 85-7-409(2) calls its notice a condition precedent, so use these dates to book the conversation early rather than to decide you have time.
Free Lien Waiver Forms for Contractors, free, no signup, PDF Word and Excel.
Nothing on this calculator counts it. Mississippi lien waiver forms, word for word from section 85-7-433, with the affidavit that stops the sixty day clock sets out what a signature does to your claim in Mississippi, with the statutory forms word for word.