Minnesota contractor pre-lien notice, the wording your contract has to carry

Nothing to fill in, and that is the point of it

Every other statutory form on this site has blanks in it. This one has none. Subdivision 1 says the notice must state as follows and then prints paragraph (a) and paragraph (b) in full, with no rule, no caption and no space to write a name. The page above shows exactly those two paragraphs and the PDF is the same two paragraphs on a sheet.

That was measured before it was built. The revisor text and the FindLaw text of the same subdivision were compared word for word: 102 words on each side, identical, and zero blank runs on either publisher. A form with no blanks is not a form builder job, so this page does not pretend to be one.

Read it and you can hear who is speaking. It says our contract price and the amounts due them from us, in the first person plural, because the contractor who signed with the owner is the one giving it. There is nobody to name because the notice is already inside your contract, with your name at the top of it.

It belongs inside the written contract, and on its own sheet only if there is not one

The statute puts the two routes in order and the first is not the sheet. Every person it applies to shall include in any written contract with the owner the notice required in this subdivision, and shall provide the owner with a copy of the written contract. So the words go into the contract document, and the owner gets a copy of that document. Both halves are in the same sentence and the second is easy to skip.

Only if no written contract for the improvement is entered into does the notice get prepared separately. Then it must be delivered personally or by certified mail to the owner or the owner's authorized agent, within ten days after the work of improvement is agreed upon.

That is why there is a copy button above the wording and a download button beside it. Copy is for the ordinary case, where the paragraphs are pasted into the contract you already use. The PDF is for the case the statute treats as second: a handshake job where the sheet has to travel on its own.

Ten days from the agreement, not from the first day on site

The separate delivery clock runs from ten days after the work of improvement is agreed upon. Not from the first day of work, not from the first delivery of materials, and not from the first payment. The subcontractor notice in subdivision 2 counts 45 days from the day the claimant first furnished labor, skill or materials, which is a different event and a different number, and the two are easy to mix up because they sit in the same section.

There is no honest way to pin the agreement date for you, and this site does not try. It is the day the job was agreed, which on a phone call is the day of the call.

Not every contractor gives it, only the one who hires out

The opening line has two conditions joined by and. It reaches every person who enters into a contract with the owner for the improvement of real property and who has contracted or will contract with any subcontractors or material suppliers to provide labor, skill or materials for the improvement.

Both have to be true. A contractor in direct contract with the owner who does the whole job with their own crew and buys nothing from a supplier for it is outside the words. The second condition is written in two tenses, has contracted or will contract, so it is not answered by looking at what you have signed so far. If you expect to buy materials for the job or put anybody under you on it, it applies.

The practical reading is that almost every general contractor is inside it, because almost every job has a supplier invoice on it somewhere.

Ten point bold, or capital letters if it is typed

The notice, whether included in a written contract or separately given, must be in at least 10-point bold type, if printed, or in capital letters, if typewritten. Both routes carry the rule, which matters because the version that lives inside a contract is the one most likely to be set in the same 9 point as everything around it.

The PDF here is printed, not typewritten, so it takes the printed branch: at least 10 point, and bold. If you paste the wording into your own contract, that is the rule to carry across with it. Bold and no smaller than 10 point.

The penalty is the lien, and the good faith clause does not reach it

Subdivision 1 closes with a single sentence: a person who fails to provide the notice shall not have the lien and remedy provided by this chapter. It is not a defense the owner has to raise and it is not damages. The lien is not there.

Subdivision 2, the subcontractor notice, has a softener. Paragraph (b) says a person entitled to a lien does not lose the right to the lien for failure to strictly comply with this subdivision if a good faith effort is made to comply, unless the owner or another lien claimant proves damage as a direct result of the failure to comply. Read the words it is written in. This subdivision. Subdivision 2. Nothing like it appears in subdivision 1.

So the two halves of one section treat a slip very differently, and the half with the harsher rule is the one given to the party who is usually better resourced and better advised.

Four ways out inside subdivision 1, and three more in subdivisions 4a to 4c

Subdivision 1 ends with its own carve-out, and all four of its limbs are about the same thing: the contractor and the owner being the same people. It is not required of any person who is an owner of the improved real estate, to any corporate contractor of which the owner of the improved real estate is an officer or controlling shareholder, to any contractor who is an officer or controlling shareholder of a corporation which is the owner of the improved real estate, or to any corporate contractor managed or controlled by substantially the same persons who manage or control a corporation which is the owner.

Subdivision 4a repeats the idea for the whole section: the notice required by this section shall not be required to be given where the contractor is managed or controlled by substantially the same persons who manage or control the owner of the improved real estate.

Subdivision 4b is the large residential exception. The notice is not required in connection with an improvement to real property consisting of or providing more than four family units when the improvement is wholly residential in character. Four units or fewer and it is back on.

Subdivision 4c is the commercial exception and it has a test rather than a line. It applies to property which is not in agricultural use and which is wholly or partially nonresidential in use, if the work is to provide or add more than 5,000 total usable square feet of floor space, or is an improvement to property whose existing building already contains more than 5,000 total usable square feet, or is an improvement to property which contains more than 5,000 square feet and does not involve constructing a new building or adding to or improving an existing one. That last limb reaches site work: the subdivision says improvements include clearing, excavating, grading, filling in, landscaping, well work, paving, surfacing and striping. Agricultural use takes its meaning from section 473H.02, subdivision 3.

The owner it goes to, and the other half of the same section

Subdivision 5 defines who the owner is for this section, and it is wider than the name on the deed. Owner means the owner of any legal or equitable interest in real property whose interest is known to one who contributes to the improvement, or has been recorded or filed for record if registered land, and who enters into a contract for the improvement of the real property. The last clause is the one that narrows it again: the person you contracted with.

Subdivision 2 is the other half of this section and it belongs to the people under you. It is the 45 day subcontractor notice, and it has its own page here: see the Minnesota pre-lien notice. If you are the contractor on the job, your own subs and suppliers are the ones who owe that one.

Subdivision 3 then puts a duty back on you. A contractor who contracts with any subcontractors or material suppliers shall, upon request, provide that subcontractor or material supplier with the name and address of the owner within 10 days of the initial request. A contractor who fails to is liable for any actual damages sustained or expenses incurred because of the failure, plus reasonable attorney fees and costs. In practice that request is usually a sub trying to serve the very notice subdivision 2 requires.

Questions people ask

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