Minnesota pre-lien notice, free and word for word from Minn. Stat. 514.011

Who sends this one, and who sends the other one

Section 514.011 prints two different notices and they are not interchangeable. Subdivision 1 is the contractor's notice, given by the person who signed with the owner, included in the written contract or delivered separately within ten days if there is no written contract. Subdivision 2 is this one, given by everybody else who is entitled to a lien under section 514.01 except a party under direct contract with the owner.

So the line is drawn by who you signed with, not by what trade you are. A general contractor with an owner contract sends the subdivision 1 notice and never sends this form. A subcontractor, a material supplier, a second tier sub, an equipment supplier, anyone standing a rung or more below the owner, sends this one.

The penalty on the other side of that line is worth knowing because it explains why owners ask for this paperwork. Subdivision 1 says a person who fails to provide the notice shall not have the lien and remedy provided by this chapter. A general contractor who left the notice out of the contract has no lien at all, and no forty-five day window to fix it either.

Section 514.01 decides who is entitled to a lien in the first place, and it is wide: anyone who performs engineering or land surveying services with respect to real estate, or contributes to the improvement of real estate by performing labor or furnishing skill, material or machinery, whether under contract with the owner or at the instance of any agent, trustee, contractor or subcontractor of the owner. If that describes you and you did not sign with the owner, this form is your lien.

Four ways the notice is not required at all

Subdivision 4a is the same ownership exception. The notice is not required where the contractor is managed or controlled by substantially the same persons who manage or control the owner of the improved real estate. Nobody has to warn themselves.

Subdivision 4b takes out larger residential work. 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. A duplex is in. A twelve unit building is out, as long as the improvement is wholly residential.

Subdivision 4c is the one that catches most commercial jobs, and it is worth reading in full rather than as a rule of thumb. The notice is not required in connection with an improvement to real property which is not in agricultural use and which is wholly or partially nonresidential in use if the work or improvement is to provide or add more than 5,000 total usable square feet of floor space, or is an improvement to real property where the existing property contains more than 5,000 total usable square feet of floor space, or is an improvement to real property which contains more than 5,000 square feet and does not involve the construction of a new building or an addition to or the improvement of an existing building.

That third clause is the sitework clause and the statute spells out what it reaches: improvements include, but are not limited to, clearing, excavating, grading, filling in, landscaping, well digging, drilling or repairing, paving, surfacing or striping parking lots, digging or repairing a ditch, drain, or reservoir. Agricultural use takes its meaning from section 473H.02, subdivision 3.

Read all three clauses of 4c together and the practical effect is that a small strip mall unit, a small office suite or a small mixed use building is still inside the notice rule, while most real commercial work is outside it. Nothing is lost by sending the notice anyway when the square footage is close, and a good deal is lost by deciding wrong.

The sentence in the form that costs the owner money

The last line of the notice reads: we may not file a lien if you paid your contractor in full before receiving this notice. That is not a courtesy. It is section 514.03, subdivision 2 stated from the owner's side.

Subdivision 2(c) caps the total of all liens at the contract price plus the price or reasonable value of any additional contract or additional work ordered by the owner, less three things. The first is payments made by the owner or the owner's agent to the contractor prior to receiving any notice prescribed by section 514.011, subdivision 2. The second is payments made to discharge lien claims as authorized by section 514.07. The third is payments made on presentation of valid lien waivers from people who had previously given this same notice.

So the date your notice lands sets the line. Every dollar the owner already paid the general before that date is subtracted from the pool every lien on the job has to share. Serve on day ten of a six month job and almost the whole contract price is still on your side of the line. Serve on day forty-four after four draws have gone out and most of it is not.

That is the real reason not to sit on this form for the full forty-five days. The deadline is the last day it is valid. It is not the best day to send it, and on a fast paying job it can be a day when the number left to lien against is close to nothing.

Late, and the one thing that saves it

Subdivision 2(b) is two lines long and it is the whole safety net: 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.

Notice what that protects and what it does not. It protects a claimant who tried, and the burden of showing harm sits on the owner or on a competing lien claimant. It says nothing at all about a claimant who never sent anything, and a good faith effort is a thing you have to be able to show. A dated copy of the notice, a certified mail receipt and the written request you sent the contractor for the owner's name under subdivision 3 are what a good faith effort looks like on paper.

This is also the answer for the second tier subcontractor reading the form and finding that it does not quite fit. The statute prints one blank for the name of your contractor and writes the sentence as though the owner's own contractor hired you. A sub two rungs down fills in the party it actually signed with, because that is the honest answer to the blank, and subdivision 2(b) is the provision that covers the imperfection.

What subdivision 2(b) will not cover is sending it late on purpose. Damage as a direct result of the failure is exactly what section 514.03 subdivision 2(c)(i) describes when the owner has paid the general in the meantime.

Two different 120 day clocks, and only one of them is yours

The notice itself tells the owner about a 120 day period: you have the right to pay us directly and deduct this amount from the contract price, or withhold the amount due us from your contractor until 120 days after completion of the improvement. That clock belongs to the owner and it is a description of the owner's options, not a deadline for you.

Your 120 days are in section 514.08, subdivision 1, and they run from a different event. The lien ceases at the end of 120 days after doing the last of the work, or furnishing the last item of skill, material, or machinery, unless within that period a statement of the claim is filed for record with the county recorder, or with the registrar of titles if the land is registered, and a copy of the statement is served personally or by certified mail on the owner, the owner's authorized agent, or the person who entered into the contract with the contractor.

So one clock runs from completion of the improvement and one runs from the last day you personally worked or delivered. On a job you finished in March that the general is still working on in August, those are months apart, and the one that ends your lien is yours.

Section 514.05 subdivision 1 sets the other end. All liens, as against the owner of the land, attach and take effect from the time the first item of material or labor is furnished upon the premises for the beginning of the improvement. Subdivision 2 adds that visible staking, engineering, land surveying and soil testing do not constitute the actual and visible beginning of the improvement on the ground.

The lien statement asks whether you sent this

Section 514.08, subdivision 2 lists the nine things a Minnesota lien statement must set forth, and the ninth is short: that notice as required by section 514.011, subdivision 2, if any, was given.

The statement is verified by the oath of some person shown by the verification to have knowledge of the facts stated. That is the moment the certified mail receipt stops being filing and starts being evidence, because somebody is swearing to it under oath months after the fact.

The rest of the list is what you would expect and is worth reading before the last day: a notice of intention to claim and hold a lien and the amount, that the amount is due and owing for labor performed or for skill, material or machinery furnished and for what improvement, the names of the claimant and of the person for or to whom it was performed or furnished, the dates when the first and last items of your contribution were made, a description of the premises identifying it with reasonable certainty, the name of the owner at the time of making the statement according to the best information then had, your post office address, and an acknowledgment that a copy must be served within the 120 day period. The statute adds that failing to insert the post office address does not invalidate the lien statement.

After that, section 514.12 subdivision 3 gives one year. No lien shall be enforced unless the holder asserts it by filing a complaint or answer with the court administrator within one year after the date of the last item of the claim as set forth in the recorded lien statement. Forty-five days, then 120 days, then a year, each running from a different event.

What the form asks you for, and what it does not

Five blanks and nothing else. Your name and address as the subcontractor, the name of the contractor, the type of service and the material you are providing, and your estimate of the charges. The statute prints a caption under each blank and this sheet keeps them where the statute puts them.

The service and material blanks are printed separately because the statute wrote them that way: to provide blank or blank for this improvement, captioned type of service and material. A trade fills the first, a yard fills the second, and a supplier who also installs fills both. Neither blank is meant to be a scope of work, and nothing in the subdivision asks you to itemize.

The estimate is an estimate and the statute says so: to the best of our knowledge, we estimate our charges will be. It is not a lien amount, it does not cap what you can claim later in a section 514.08 statement, and getting it wrong is not a defect. Put down the contract figure you have on the day you send it.

There is no signature line on this form, and that is the statute's doing rather than an omission here. Subdivision 2 says what the notice shall state and stops, and it describes no signature, no date line, no notarization and no witness. A statutory form is reproduced as printed, so nothing was added. The proof that matters is not a signature on the sheet anyway. It is the certified mail receipt or the record of personal delivery, kept in the job file against the day section 514.08 asks you to swear the notice was given.

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.