Michigan notice of furnishing, free and word for word from MCL 570.1109
In Michigan this one sheet is what stops the owner paying somebody else for your work and calling it settled. MCL 570.1110(8) says an owner, lessee, designee, mortgagee or contractor may rely on a sworn statement prepared by another party to avoid the claim of a subcontractor, supplier or laborer, and then names the one thing that takes that defense away: unless the subcontractor, supplier or laborer has provided a notice of furnishing under section 109. Serve it and you are on the list the owner has to withhold money for. Skip it and the general contractor can leave your name off a sworn statement, the owner can pay against that statement in good faith, and the money is gone before anyone records anything. You have twenty days from your first labor or material. Fill it in below and download it, or print it blank and write on it.
MCL 570.1109(1) gives a subcontractor or supplier twenty days after furnishing the first labor or material to provide a notice of furnishing to the designee and the general contractor, if any, as named in the notice of commencement, at the address shown in that notice. The clock starts at the front of the job, not at the invoice that went unpaid, so a supplier who dropped one pallet in March and came back in July has a March problem. A laborer who contracts to provide an improvement gets thirty days after wages were contractually due but were not paid, under subsection (2), and for fringe benefits or withholdings subsection (3) runs to the fifth day of the second month following the month they were due. A contractor is not required to provide one at all for lien rights arising from a contract directly with an owner or lessee. Certified mail is worth the counter: subsections (1) and (3) both say that if service is made by certified mail, service is complete on mailing, so a notice mailed on day twenty is served on day twenty whatever happens next.
Read the law: MCL 570.1109legislature.mi.gov, 570.1109 at FindLawcodes.findlaw.com, 570.1107codes.findlaw.com, 570.1108codes.findlaw.com, 570.1108acodes.findlaw.com, 570.1110codes.findlaw.com, 570.1111codes.findlaw.com and 570.1117codes.findlaw.com
Fill it in online Type your details in and download it already filled in.Download a blank Michigan notice of furnishing
Word for word from the form in MCL 570.1109, subsection (4). It is served on the designee and on the general contractor, not recorded anywhere, and a copy of it goes on the back of your claim of lien later. Print it and fill it in by hand, or use the builder below and get it back already filled in.
Free, no signup, no email, no watermark.
The sworn statement rule is the reason this form exists
Most states make a notice like this a precondition of the lien and stop there. Michigan does something sharper. MCL 570.1110 makes the contractor give the owner a sworn statement listing every subcontractor and supplier and what each is owed, and subsection (8) lets an owner, lessee, designee, mortgagee or contractor rely on a sworn statement prepared by a party other than himself or herself to avoid the claim of a subcontractor, supplier or laborer, unless that person has provided a notice of furnishing as required under section 109 or is excused under section 108 or 108a.
Read the two halves together and the sheet on this page pays for itself. A general contractor who leaves your company off a sworn statement has handed the owner a defense, and the owner who pays against that statement is protected. Serve the notice of furnishing and the defense is gone, whatever the sworn statement says.
Subsection (7) is the other half of the bargain and it is the part nobody uses. After the sworn statement arrives, the owner or lessee may withhold, and on written demand from the contractor shall withhold, an amount sufficient to pay all sums due to subcontractors, suppliers or laborers as shown by the sworn statement, or due to lien claimants who have provided a notice of furnishing under section 109. From the amount withheld the owner may pay those people directly. Serving this form puts you on that list even if the sworn statement never mentions you.
On a residential structure there is a third piece. Subsection (6) says that on receipt of a sworn statement the owner, lessee or designee shall give notice of its receipt, in writing, by telephone or personally, to each subcontractor, supplier and laborer who has provided a notice of furnishing under section 109, and shall provide a copy of the sworn statement within 10 business days of a request. That notification only reaches people who served this form.
Where every answer on the form comes from
This form is not asking you what you know. It is asking you to copy a recorded document. MCL 570.1108(1) makes the owner or lessee contracting for improvements record a notice of commencement in the office of the register of deeds for each county where the property is, before the work commences, and MCL 570.1108(2) lists what goes in it: the legal description, the name, address and capacity of the owner or lessee, the fee owner if the contracting party is a land contract vendee or lessee, the name and address of the designee, and the name and address of the general contractor.
That is the To line, the address under it, the liber and page, the county and the legal description, all in one document. Michigan registers of deeds index by liber and page rather than by an instrument number, which is why subsection (4) prints a blank for each, and why the form then offers the alternative of attaching a copy of the notice of commencement instead of writing the description out.
MCL 570.1108(3) is the detail that explains the form's first eleven words. A copy of a notice of commencement must have a blank notice of furnishing attached to it, easily detachable, and it need not be recorded. So subsection (4) opens with if not given on the form attached to the notice of commencement, must be in substantially the following form. If somebody handed you the notice of commencement with its blank still attached, use that. If nobody did, this is the form.
The remaining answers are yours: the name and address of the other contracting party, meaning whoever you actually signed with rather than whoever is named as general contractor above it; the type of work; your own name and address as lien claimant; the name and capacity of the person signing for you; that person's address, which the statute asks for separately from the company's; and the date.
Getting the notice of commencement out of people who will not send it
Nobody has to hand a subcontractor the notice of commencement unprompted, so the Act arms you with a written request and then punishes silence. MCL 570.1108(5) says an owner, lessee or designee required to record one shall, within 10 days after the date of mailing of a written request by certified mail from a subcontractor, supplier or laborer, provide a copy with an attached blank notice of furnishing form.
The same duty runs down the chain. Subsection (6) puts it on a contractor who has been provided with one, on certified mail request from a subcontractor, supplier or laborer who has a direct contract with that contractor. Subsection (7) puts it on a subcontractor in the same way. Ten days each. Subsections (15) and (16) make whoever fails liable to the lien claimant for all actual expenses sustained in obtaining the information otherwise provided by the notice.
The deadline moves with the silence. MCL 570.1108(10) says failure to record the notice of commencement extends the time within which a subcontractor or supplier may provide a notice of furnishing until 20 days after it has been recorded. Subsection (11) says failure to provide it on written request extends that time until 20 days after it actually has been furnished. Subsections (12) and (13) give a laborer 30 days on the same terms, or the ordinary section 109 time, whichever is later.
Two practical readings follow. Send the written request by certified mail at the start of the job, and keep the receipt, because that receipt is what turns silence into an extension. And if no notice of commencement was ever recorded, your twenty days have not started, so the job to worry about is the one where a notice exists and nobody showed it to you.
Houses are inside this, not carved out of it
Several states drop residential work out of the notice system entirely. Michigan does the opposite: it writes a second section for it. MCL 570.1108(18) says section 108 does not apply to an improvement to a residential structure, and MCL 570.1108a(14) says section 108a only applies to one. The notice of furnishing in section 109 sits above both and applies either way.
What changes is how the notice of commencement reaches you. On a residential structure the owner or lessee does not record one at all. MCL 570.1108a(1) makes them prepare and provide one to a contractor, subcontractor, supplier or laborer who has made a written request, and subsection (5) adds a condition most people miss: the person requesting it has to supply a blank notice of commencement form, with the blank notice of furnishing attached, to the owner at the time the request is made. Ask for it empty handed on a house and nothing is owed to you.
The form the homeowner fills in carries a warning in boldface, printed in MCL 570.1108a(2)(f), telling them to complete and return it within 10 days after the date of the postmark on the request, that failing to do so may make them pay the expenses of getting the information, and that if they do not live at the site they must post a copy there. Subsection (9) then extends a subcontractor or supplier's notice of furnishing time to 20 days after the notice of commencement actually has been furnished, and subsection (10) gives a laborer 30.
There is a residential consequence on the waiver side too. MCL 570.1115(7) says that on a residential structure an owner, lessee or designee shall not rely on a full or partial waiver of lien provided by a person other than the lien claimant named in the waiver, if that claimant has filed a notice of furnishing under section 109 or is excused under section 108 or 108a, unless they first verify the waiver is authentic with the claimant in writing, by telephone or personally. Serving this form is what makes a forged waiver in your name somebody else's problem.
Late is survivable here, which is unusual
MCL 570.1109(5) says the failure of a lien claimant to provide a notice of furnishing within the time specified does not defeat the right to a construction lien for work performed or materials furnished after the service of the notice of furnishing. Everything from the day you serve it forward is still on the lien no matter how late you are.
Subsection (6) covers what came before, and it is narrower than it first reads. A late notice does not defeat the lien for earlier work either, except to the extent that payments were made by or on behalf of the owner or lessee to the contractor pursuant to either a contractor's sworn statement or a waiver of lien in accordance with this act, for work performed or material delivered by the lien claimant. So you only lose the part the owner has already paid out against paperwork covering your own work. On a job where nothing has been drawn yet, a late notice costs you nothing. The same subsection says it does not apply to a laborer.
Laborers are treated more harshly, and deliberately. Subsections (7) and (8) say that a laborer's failure to provide a notice of furnishing to the designee as required by subsection (2) or (3) defeats the laborer's lien for the wages, or for the fringe benefits and withholdings, that the notice was required for. Subsection (9) softens only the other addressee: failing to notify the general contractor in time does not defeat the laborer's lien, but the laborer is liable for any actual damages the general contractor sustains as a result.
None of that is a reason to be late. It is a reason not to give up on a job you were late on. The worst case for a subcontractor or supplier is losing the already-paid slice, and the sheet still protects the rest.
Ninety days to record the lien, and this form goes on the back of it
The notice of furnishing preserves the right. The lien itself is the claim of lien in MCL 570.1111, and subsection (1) says the right to a construction lien ceases to exist unless, within 90 days after the lien claimant's last furnishing of labor or material for the improvement, a claim of lien is recorded in the office of the register of deeds for each county where the property is located.
Subsection (4) is the sentence that makes this page matter twice: a claim of lien by a subcontractor, supplier or laborer shall have attached to it a proof of service of a notice of furnishing described in section 109. The certified mail receipt you file today is an exhibit ninety days from now, and a claim of lien that cannot carry one is a claim of lien with a hole in it.
Subsection (5) adds a second deadline nobody remembers. Within 15 days after recording, you must serve on the designee, personally or by certified mail return receipt requested at the address shown on the notice of commencement, a copy of the claim of lien and a copy of any proof of service recorded with it. If no designee was named, or the designee has died, service goes to the owner or lessee named in the notice. Certified mail is again complete upon mailing, and proof of making that service has to be attached to any complaint, cross-claim or counterclaim filed to enforce the lien.
Then MCL 570.1117(1) closes the sequence: proceedings for enforcement and foreclosure shall not be brought later than 1 year after the date the claim of lien was recorded, with a lis pendens recorded when the action starts. MCL 570.1118 puts the action in the circuit court for the county, calls it equitable in nature, and lets the court allow reasonable attorneys' fees to a prevailing lien claimant, or to a prevailing defendant if the claimant's action was vexatious.
What the lien is worth once you have it
Two ceilings sit over every Michigan construction lien and both are worth knowing before you spend money enforcing one. MCL 570.1107(1) says a construction lien shall not exceed the amount of the lien claimant's contract less payments made on the contract. That is your own ceiling and it is the easy one.
MCL 570.1107(6) is the shared one. If the property is subject to multiple construction liens, the sum of them shall not exceed the amount the owner or lessee agreed to pay the person they contracted with, as modified by all additions, deletions and other amendments, less payments made by or on behalf of the owner pursuant to either a contractor's sworn statement or a waiver of lien in accordance with this act. Every dollar the owner correctly pays out against a sworn statement or a waiver comes off the pot that all the liens share.
That is the same sworn statement and the same waiver from the top of this page, seen from the other end, and it is why serving the notice of furnishing early is worth more than serving it correctly late. Early, you are inside the sworn statement process and on the withholding list. Late, you are arguing over what is left of a pot that other people have been drawing down.
One residential limit is easy to miss. MCL 570.1107(7) says a subcontractor's or supplier's lien for an improvement to a residential structure only includes interest, including a time-price differential or finance charge, if the amount is in accordance with the terms of the contract with the contractor or subcontractor, and does not include interest accruing after 90 days after the claim of lien is recorded. Sitting on a recorded lien stops earning after three months.
Laborers, agents, and one notice covering a crew
MCL 570.1109(10) lets one or more laborers authorize an agent to prepare and serve a notice of furnishing in the manner provided in the section. One notice may contain the notice of furnishing of more than one laborer, and it must contain the information required by subsection (4) as to each laborer for whom it is prepared. A court shall consider the notice of furnishing of each lien claimant under that subsection on its own merits, so one bad entry does not take the rest of the crew down with it.
The same arrangement runs through the rest of the Act. MCL 570.1111(6) lets an agent prepare, record and serve a claim of lien for a group of laborers on the same terms, and MCL 570.1117(3) lets that agent maintain the foreclosure action. MCL 570.1115(8) makes the agent automatically authorized and responsible for providing waivers of lien as well, unless and until the laborers notify the designee in writing that somebody else is authorized.
The builder on this page fills one claimant at a time, which is what almost everybody needs. A fund or a union office serving for a crew should take the blank sheet, since the statute is explicit that the information required by subsection (4) has to appear for each laborer and the form was never drawn with repeating blocks.
The deadlines for laborers are the ones in subsections (2) and (3) rather than the twenty days in subsection (1), and subsections (7) and (8) make missing them fatal to that slice of the lien. That is the opposite of the subcontractor's position, so a crew should never be run on the same calendar as a supplier.
Questions people ask
How do I get hold of the notice of commencement?
Ask for it in writing, by certified mail, and keep the receipt. MCL 570.1108(5) gives the owner, lessee or designee 10 days after the date of mailing to provide a copy with a blank notice of furnishing attached, and subsections (6) and (7) put the same 10 day duty on a contractor or subcontractor you have a direct contract with. On a commercial job it is also recorded with the register of deeds for the county, so it can be pulled there. On a house it is not recorded at all, and MCL 570.1108a(5) requires you to supply the owner with a blank notice of commencement form, with the blank notice of furnishing attached, at the time you make the request.
Nobody recorded a notice of commencement. Am I late?
No. MCL 570.1108(10) says that a failure to record extends the time within which a subcontractor or supplier may provide a notice of furnishing until 20 days after it has been recorded, and subsection (11) does the same from the day it is actually furnished to you after a written request. A laborer gets 30 days on the same terms under subsections (12) and (13), or the ordinary section 109 time, whichever is later. The clock you are worried about has not started.
Do I serve the designee or the owner?
The designee named in the notice of commencement, at the address shown there, and the general contractor if there is one. MCL 570.1109(1) sends you to the owner or lessee named in the notice only if a designee has not been named or if the designee has died. Use the printed address rather than a better one you found, because that address is the one the statute points at.
I am past twenty days. Is it worth sending?
Yes, and Michigan is unusually forgiving here. MCL 570.1109(5) keeps the lien for everything furnished after service no matter how late the notice is, and subsection (6) keeps it for the earlier work too, except to the extent the owner has already paid the contractor against a sworn statement or a waiver of lien covering your work. On a job where the draws have not caught up to you, a late notice costs nothing. Laborers are the exception: subsections (7) and (8) make a laborer's late notice to the designee fatal to the wages or fringe benefits it was required for.
I signed directly with the owner. Do I need this?
No. MCL 570.1109(1) ends by saying a contractor is not required to provide a notice of furnishing to preserve lien rights arising from his or her contract directly with an owner or lessee. The form is for people standing a rung or more below whoever signed with the owner. You still have the sworn statement duties in MCL 570.1110 and the 90 day claim of lien deadline in MCL 570.1111.
Does this apply on a house?
Yes. Michigan does not carve residential work out of the notice of furnishing. What changes is the notice of commencement: MCL 570.1108(18) takes houses out of the recording section and MCL 570.1108a puts them in their own, where the owner prepares and provides one on written request instead of recording it. Section 109 sits above both. If anything, the residential rules make serving this form worth more, because MCL 570.1110(6) and MCL 570.1115(7) both give extra protection specifically to a claimant who has provided a notice of furnishing.
How should I send it, and what do I keep?
Certified mail, for a reason written into the statute. MCL 570.1109(1) and (3) both say that if service of the notice of furnishing is made by certified mail, service is complete on mailing, so day twenty at the post office counter is served on day twenty. Personal service is the other option. A laborer serving under subsection (2) may use ordinary mail, complete on mailing by first class mail with postage prepaid. Keep the receipt and a dated copy in the job file, because MCL 570.1111(4) makes a proof of service of the notice of furnishing an attachment to your claim of lien.
What is a liber and page?
It is how a Michigan register of deeds indexes what it records: the volume and the page inside it. The notice of commencement you are copying from was recorded somewhere, and the form asks for the liber and page so the reader can find it. If you do not have them, the form gives you the alternative it prints in subsection (4), which is to attach a copy of the notice of commencement to this notice instead of describing where it lives.
Is this the official Michigan form?
The wording is the form printed in MCL 570.1109(4), sliced out of the statute text rather than rewritten, and that subsection asks that a notice of furnishing be in substantially the following form if it is not given on the form attached to the notice of commencement. The text was taken from the Michigan Legislature's own publisher and keyed against FindLaw's copy letter for letter before it went up. Nothing on this page is legal advice.
Once the job is running and you are getting paid on it, the paperwork that comes next is the waiver: see the Michigan statutory lien waiver forms, and conditional vs unconditional lien waiver for which of the two to sign.