Missouri Mechanics Lien Deadline Calculator, Including the Ten Day Notice Squeeze That Ends Most Subcontractor Claims

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.

What this calculator assumes

• Missouri points its hardest rule at the general contractor, and every other state on this site points the same rule at the subcontractor. Section 429.012(1) makes every original contractor hand the owner a written NOTICE TO OWNER in ten-point bold type, before receiving payment in any form of any kind, and 429.012(2) says compliance 'shall be a condition precedent to the creation, existence or validity of any mechanic's lien in favor of such original contractor'. There is no late filing, no cure, and no shortened lien. A general contractor who took a deposit before handing that page across has no lien on the job and nothing in chapter 429 gives it back.
• Six months is not one hundred and eighty days. Sections 429.080 and 429.170 both count in calendar months, so the real span is 181 to 184 days depending on which six months you are in. This page counts to day 181, which is the earliest the six months can possibly run out, because a calculator that prints one confident number where the statute gives a range is lying in the direction that costs you the lien. Your true last day is the same day of the month, six months on. Put it on a calendar.
• The ten day notice under 429.100 is the only deadline on this site that runs backward from a date you choose yourself. Everyone except the original contractor must give the owner ten days' notice BEFORE filing the lien, and you pick the filing date. So it cannot be missed by surprise, only by haste: serve it late in the six months and you can find that filing on time and giving ten days' notice have become two things you cannot both do. That is why this page leads with the notice rather than with the filing until the notice has gone out.
• On a repair, remodel or addition to an owner-occupied home of four units or less, section 429.013(3) makes a copy of a signed CONSENT OF OWNER, attached to your recorded lien claim, 'a condition precedent to the creation, existence or validity of any lien by anyone other than an original contractor'. You do not hold that document. The general contractor does, and whether the owner signed it was settled before you were hired. Section 429.013(3) does make him furnish you a copy on request, so ask in writing on day one rather than on day one hundred and seventy.
• This calculator counts days. It does not decide when your indebtedness accrued, which is the fact every Missouri lien argument turns on, it does not tell you whether your work makes you an original contractor, and it does not read your contract. Those are the questions a Missouri construction lawyer earns a fee answering, and the dates below are what you take to that conversation rather than a substitute for it.

Six months from accrual, sixty days if you rented the equipment out, and it is filed at the circuit court

Section 429.080 is the filing deadline and it carries two limbs in one sentence. The ordinary one is six months after the indebtedness shall have accrued. The other one is sixty days after the date the last of the rental equipment or machinery was last removed from the property, and it applies to a lessor who rented machinery or equipment to somebody else rather than using it himself. Sixty days is a third of the time everyone else gets, and the rental limb is the deadline most often missed in Missouri because the person missing it has read the six months figure and assumed it was his.

Two things about the six months are worth being precise about, because this page counts in days and the statute does not. Six calendar months is not one hundred and eighty days. Depending on which month you start in it is one hundred and eighty one, one hundred and eighty two, one hundred and eighty three or one hundred and eighty four. This page uses one hundred and eighty one, the shortest of the four, so that the number it shows you is never longer than your real window. If you are inside the last two weeks it will say so and tell you to count the actual months on a calendar rather than trusting the arithmetic.

The second is the word accrued. The clock does not run from your last day on site, it runs from the day the indebtedness accrued, which for most claimants is the last day work or material was furnished under the contract. It is not the invoice date and it is not the day payment became due under the payment terms. If those dates are more than a few days apart, get advice before relying on the later one.

Missouri also files in an unusual place. Section 429.080 says file with the clerk of the circuit court of the proper county. Not the recorder of deeds. Most states in this lane record a lien with the county recorder and a claimant who has worked in Illinois or Kansas will go to the wrong counter. The notice of rights under section 429.016 does go to the recorder of deeds, which means a Missouri claimant on a residential sale may have business at two different offices on two different clocks.

What you file is a just and true account of the demand due after all just credits have been given, with a description of the property and the name of the owner or contractor, verified by oath. The phrase after all just credits have been given is not decoration. A Missouri lien filed for more than is honestly owed is attackable on that ground alone.

Missouri Revised Statutes section 429.080

It shall be the duty of every original contractor, every journeyman and day laborer, including persons who use rented machinery or equipment in performing such work or labor, and every other person seeking to obtain the benefit of the provisions of sections 429.010 to 429.340, within six months after the indebtedness shall have accrued, or, with respect to rental equipment or machinery rented to others, then, within sixty days after the date the last of the rental equipment or machinery was last removed from the property, to file with the clerk of the circuit court of the proper county a just and true account of the demand due him or them after all just credits have been given, which is to be a lien upon such building or other improvements, and a true description of the property, or so near as to identify the same, upon which the lien is intended to apply, with the name of the owner or contractor, or both, if known to the person filing the lien, which shall, in all cases, be verified by the oath of himself or some credible person for him.

Read the two limbs against each other. Six months runs from when the indebtedness accrued, which is your work. Sixty days runs from when the last of the rental equipment was last removed from the property, which may be long after anyone was still using it. The sixty day limb is the one that catches people, because it is shorter and its trigger belongs to somebody else's schedule.

The ten days notice runs backward from a date you have not picked yet

Section 429.100 says every person except the original contractor shall give ten days notice before the filing of the lien. Every state in this lane has a preliminary notice of some kind, and in almost all of them it runs forward from a day you were there for, usually the day you started or the day you first delivered. Missouri is not like that. The ten days runs backward from the day you file, and you have not filed yet.

That sounds like freedom and it is not. It means you cannot be late for the notice in the ordinary sense, but it also means the notice silently eats ten days off the end of your filing window, and no section says so. Your effective deadline as a subcontractor is not six months. It is six months minus ten days, because the last day you can serve a notice and still file inside the window is day one hundred and seventy one of a one hundred and eighty one day window.

This is what the page calls the squeeze, and it is the single most common way a Missouri subcontractor with a perfectly good claim ends up with nothing. Day one hundred and seventy five, notice served today, earliest lawful filing day one hundred and eighty five, window closed on day one hundred and eighty one. Neither half works. Serving today and filing on day ten puts the account four days past the window. Filing today without the ten days out means filing without having complied with a condition the courts treat seriously. There is no version of this that a calculator should be resolving for you, and when the page detects it, it says so and tells you to see a Missouri construction lawyer today.

It is also why the headline on this page leads with the notice rather than with the filing while the notice is still owed. Showing a subcontractor at day one hundred and seventy five a cheerful six days left to file would be arithmetically true and practically a trap, because the filing is not a step he can lawfully take from where he is standing. The only reachable step is the notice, so that is what the headline names.

The second half of section 429.100 is about service and it is not a formality. The notice may be served by any officer authorized by law to serve process in civil actions, or by any person who would be a competent witness. Where an officer serves it, the official return endorsed on it is the proof. Where anyone else serves it, the fact of service has to be verified by affidavit of the person who served it. Get the affidavit at the time. Reconstructing proof of service six months later, from a person who has since left the company, is how a good claim turns into an argument.

Missouri Revised Statutes section 429.100

Every person except the original contractor, who may wish to avail himself of the benefit of the provisions of sections 429.010 to 429.340, shall give ten days' notice before the filing of the lien, as herein required, to the owner, owners or agent, or either of them, that he holds a claim against such building or improvement, setting forth the amount and from whom the same is due. Such notice may be served by any officer authorized by law to serve process in civil actions, or by any person who would be a competent witness. When served by an officer, his official return endorsed thereon shall be proof thereof, and when served by any other person, the fact of such service shall be verified by affidavit of the person so serving.

Ten days' notice before the filing of the lien. The statute never mentions the filing deadline in the same breath, which is precisely why the interaction catches people. The notice has no date of its own. It takes ten days off the end of whatever window section 429.080 gave you.

The hardest rule in the chapter points at the general contractor, not at you

Section 429.012 requires an original contractor to give the owner a written notice, in ten-point bold type, before receiving payment in any form of any kind. Not before the first progress payment. Before any payment, including a deposit taken at signing. And section 429.012(2) makes compliance a condition precedent to the creation, existence or validity of any mechanics lien in favor of such original contractor.

Condition precedent is the strongest phrase in the chapter. There is no late notice, no cure, no shortened lien and no discretion. A general contractor who took a deposit at the kitchen table before handing over the notice has no lien on that job, and no date on this page will change that. If you are a general contractor and that is your situation, the deadlines above are not your problem, because you do not have a lien for them to apply to.

The words in favor of such original contractor are the other half of the rule and they matter to everyone else on the job. Section 429.012 bars the original contractor's lien and it does not bar yours. A subcontractor is not punished for a general contractor's failure to serve the owner. This page will never tell a subcontractor his lien is gone because of section 429.012, and if anyone tells you otherwise, ask them to read the last six words of subsection 2 out loud.

There is one exemption and it is narrow. Section 429.012(4) switches off subsections 1 and 2 for new residences where the buyer has been furnished mechanics and suppliers lien protection through a title insurance company registered in Missouri. It covers the new build sold with title company lien protection. It does not cover a remodel, and it is not a general escape from the notice.

What survives a section 429.012 bar is the debt. Losing the lien does not pay the invoice and does not make the contract claim go away. A general contractor in this position still has an ordinary action for the money and, depending on the facts, other remedies. He has lost the security, not the claim, and that distinction is worth an hour with a lawyer rather than an assumption.

Missouri Revised Statutes section 429.012(2)

2. Compliance with subsection 1 of this section shall be a condition precedent to the creation, existence or validity of any mechanic's lien in favor of such original contractor.

Six words do the work here: in favor of such original contractor. The bar is aimed at one person on the job. Every other claimant's lien is untouched by this section, which is the opposite of how most people describe it.

On an owner-occupied remodel, a subcontractor needs a signed consent he has never seen

Section 429.013 applies to work on an existing owner-occupied residence, which in practice means a remodel, an addition or a repair rather than a new build. It requires a written consent of the owner in a prescribed form, and section 429.013(3) makes attaching a copy of that signed consent to the recording of the claim of lien a condition precedent to the creation, existence or validity of any lien by anyone other than an original contractor.

Read who that is aimed at. Section 429.012 bars the general contractor for a document the general contractor controls. Section 429.013(3) bars everybody else for a document the general contractor also controls. A subcontractor on an owner-occupied remodel cannot file a valid lien without a piece of paper he has probably never seen and certainly did not sign.

The same subsection gives you the way to get it. It says the original contractor shall retain a copy of the notice and any consent signed by an owner, and shall furnish a copy to any person performing work or furnishing material upon his request. So the request is yours to make and the duty to answer is his. Make it in writing, make it today, and keep the proof you sent it. If the answer is that no consent was ever signed, you have learned something important early rather than at the counter on day one hundred and eighty.

This page treats an unknown consent differently from a missing one, deliberately. If you do not know whether a consent exists, your dates still run and the page still shows them, with the consent named as the first thing to find out. Not knowing is not a legal position. What is not survivable is a consent that was never signed, and for that the page says the lien is gone rather than giving you a countdown to a filing that cannot be made.

One more thing in this section changes what a missing consent means. Section 429.013(4) says that in the absence of a consent, full payment of the amount due under the contract to the contractor is a complete defense to all liens filed by any person performing work or furnishing material, and partial payment acts as an offset to the extent of the payment. So the practical question on an owner-occupied remodel with no consent is not only whether you can file. It is whether the owner has already paid the general contractor, because if the owner has paid in full, the lien is worth nothing even where you could file it. The page asks you what you know about that and adjusts what it tells you.

Missouri Revised Statutes section 429.013(3), the condition precedent

It shall be a condition precedent to the creation, existence or validity of any lien by anyone other than an original contractor that a copy of a consent in the form prescribed in subsection 2 of this section, signed by an owner, be attached to the recording of a claim of lien. The signature of one or more of the owners shall be binding upon all owners.

Two duties in one subsection. The original contractor has to keep the consent and hand you a copy when you ask. You have to attach that copy when you record. The second duty is yours and it is impossible to perform until the first one has been performed by somebody else.

If the house is being sold, a clock you did not start can end your lien

Section 429.016 is the newest trap in the chapter and it only exists on residential real property that the owner is selling. The claimant's duty is in subsection 3: record a notice of rights in the office of the recorder of deeds not less than five calendar days prior to the intended date of closing stated in a notice of intended sale. Five calendar days, not five business days, and the date belongs to somebody else's transaction.

Before that duty exists at all, the owner has to move first. Section 429.016(11)(1) says the owner shall record a notice of intended sale not less than forty-five calendar days before the earliest date the owner intends to close, and that the owner's recording of it is a condition precedent to a claimant's obligation to record a notice of rights. So if no notice of intended sale has been recorded, you have nothing to do under this section and no deadline to miss. This page will not invent one for you, and that is not a technicality, it is the structure the statute chose.

Only one notice of intended sale is ever recorded, even if the closing is postponed to a later date. That cuts both ways. A postponed closing does not give you a fresh forty-five days, and it does not restart your five day count from a new date, because your five days run from the intended date of closing stated in the notice.

Subsection 4 helps in a way worth knowing about. A claimant who is accurately identified in any previously recorded notice of rights is relieved of the duty to record one, and the word doing the work there is accurately, because a filing that gets your name or the parcel wrong does not cover you. Subsection 5 is the only weekend rule anywhere in this chapter: if the last day to record falls on a Saturday, Sunday or a Missouri legal holiday, the notice is due on the next day the recorder's office is open. This page counts calendar days and does not apply that rollover, so treat a deadline that lands on a weekend as a bonus you should not spend.

Subsection 6 is what happens if you miss it, and the second sentence is the part nobody quotes. A claimant who fails to record is deemed to waive and forfeit any right to assert a mechanics lien against the property, and despite that waiver, shall retain all other rights and remedies allowed by law to collect payment for its work, labor, and materials. You lose the lien. You keep the debt, the contract claim and whatever else you had. And once the property has been conveyed to a bona fide purchaser for value, subsection 7 makes a notice of rights recorded afterwards ineffective, so the closing itself is the real end of this one.

Missouri Revised Statutes section 429.016(11)(1), the condition precedent

The notice of intended sale shall be recorded not less than forty-five calendar days prior to the earliest calendar date the owner intends to close on the sale of such property to such purchaser. The notice of intended sale shall state the calendar date on which the owner intends to close on the sale of such property to such purchaser. Only one notice of intended sale shall be recorded, even if the intended date of closing stated therein is postponed to a date later than that stated in the notice of intended sale. The owner's, or its designated agent's, recording of a notice of intended sale as to the subject property, as contemplated herein, is a condition precedent to a claimant's obligation to record a notice of rights as to the subject property in order to retain a claimant's mechanic’s lien rights as to such property.

The last sentence is the one to hold on to. No notice of intended sale means no obligation to record a notice of rights. A claimant who has never seen one recorded against this property has no deadline under section 429.016, and section 429.016(11)(3) gives him a written route to ask for a copy of one that does exist.

Six months from filing to sue, and filing early starts it early

Section 429.170 gives you six months after filing the lien to commence your action, and it says no lien shall continue to exist for more than six months after the lien shall be filed unless within that time an action shall be instituted. That is not a limitation period sitting beside a living lien. It is the life of the lien itself, which is why this page calls a lien with nothing filed on it within six months expired rather than merely time barred.

Notice which date it runs from. Not accrual, not completion, not the date the money became due. From the filing. That has a consequence people rarely think about before they file: filing on the first day you are entitled to file starts the six month clock on that day too. Filing early is sometimes right, because it puts pressure on a payment and it removes the risk of miscounting the six months at the front end. But it also means you will be looking at a lawsuit six months sooner than you needed to, and on a job where the money is still moving and the relationship is still worth something, that can be the wrong trade.

The section also says prosecuted without unnecessary delay to final judgment. Commencing an action on day one hundred and eighty and then letting it sleep is not what the statute describes, and Missouri courts have not treated it as though it were.

This page will not show you a countdown to suing until you tell it something was filed, because before then the clock does not exist. And if the filing window under section 429.080 has already closed with nothing filed, the page says so rather than offering you a suing deadline that can never start. The only thing left worth arguing about at that point is whether the accrual date really was the one you entered.

One related section is worth knowing even though it is not a deadline. Section 429.060 says the lien is preferred to all other encumbrances attached to the building or the ground subsequent to the commencement of the buildings or improvements. Commencement of the work, not the date you filed. A Missouri mechanics lien that is properly perfected can therefore outrank a construction mortgage recorded after the first shovel went in the ground, and that is often where the value of the lien actually comes from.

Missouri Revised Statutes section 429.170

All actions under sections 429.010 to 429.340 shall be commenced within six months after filing the lien, and prosecuted without unnecessary delay to final judgment; and no lien shall continue to exist by virtue of the provisions of said sections, for more than six months after the lien shall be filed, unless within that time an action shall be instituted thereon, as herein prescribed.

No lien shall continue to exist. The six months does not merely bar a remedy, it ends the lien, and it runs from the filing rather than from the work. That is why the countdown on this page does not appear until something has been filed.

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