Mississippi lien waiver forms, word for word from section 85-7-433, with the affidavit that stops the sixty day clock

Which of the Mississippi forms you need

• Interim Waiver and Release Upon Payment. Use this for any payment that is not final. Georgia calls it an interim payment rather than a progress payment.
• Waiver and Release Upon Final Payment. Use this for the last payment on the job. It releases everything, including retainage, so it is the one to read twice.
• Affidavit of Nonpayment. This is not a waiver. It is what you file when the payment a waiver was signed for never turned up.

The statute prints five forms and three of them are yours

Section 85-7-433 sets out five forms in a row: the interim waiver and release upon payment, the waiver and release upon final payment, the affidavit of nonpayment, the notice of contest of lien and the pre-lien notice to owner.

Only the first three belong to a lien claimant, so only those three are on this page. The notice of contest of lien is the owner's document, filed to shorten the time you have to enforce. The pre-lien notice to owner is a different animal, sent at the start of a job rather than at a payment.

Section 85-7-419 is the section that tells you which one to hand over. Subsection (2) says a waiver given in exchange for anything other than final payment shall substantially follow the interim form in 85-7-433(1). Subsection (3) says a waiver given for final payment shall substantially follow the final payment form in 85-7-433(2).

Both subsections add the same forgiving sentence: failing to correctly complete a blank space does not invalidate the form if the subject matter of the release reasonably may be determined. A clerical slip is survivable. Handing over somebody else's national template is a different question.

The sentence printed on the form is the one that costs money

Read the block capitals at the bottom of the interim and final forms before you sign either of them. You shall be conclusively deemed to have been paid in full the amount stated above, even if you have not actually received the payment, sixty days after the date stated above, unless you file either an affidavit of nonpayment or a claim of lien before the expiration of the sixty day period.

Not presumed paid. Conclusively deemed paid. Section 85-7-419(5)(b) lists three triggers and says amounts are deemed paid in full on the earliest of them: actual receipt of funds, a separate written acknowledgment of payment in full, and the sixtieth day. The third one fires when the other two never happen, which is exactly the situation you would be worried about.

So on a Mississippi job the date you sign is a deadline, not a memory. Put it in the diary the same afternoon and count sixty days forward.

One detail worth noticing: the statute in 85-7-419(5)(b)(iii) stops the clock with an affidavit of nonpayment, while the notice printed on the form says an affidavit of nonpayment or a claim of lien. The form is more generous than the subsection. If you are cutting it fine, file the affidavit, because it is the route the statute itself names and it is the shorter piece of paperwork.

The affidavit of nonpayment, and the two days after you file it

The affidavit is the third form below. It says you executed a waiver dated a particular day, that the amount set out in that waiver has not been paid, and that the facts are sworn true by the undersigned. Section 85-7-419(5)(f) lets you fill it in using the information already written on the waiver, so you are copying, not investigating.

It gets filed in the county where the property is located, before the sixtieth day. Then, printed on the face of the form itself, comes the part people miss: within two days of filing, you shall send a copy by registered or certified mail or statutory overnight delivery to the owner of the property.

The form adds the shortcut for corporate owners. Where the owner is an entity on file with the Secretary of State, sending the copy to the company's address or the registered agent's address on file is deemed sufficient. That saves an argument about whether you found the right address.

Once filed, section 85-7-419(5)(e) suspends the waiver until payment in full has actually been received. Your release goes back to sleep and the claim stays alive. And if the money then turns up, subsection (5)(c) asks you to execute a recordable affidavit saying payment in full was received, which voids the affidavit of nonpayment when it is recorded in the same county. That is fair to the owner and it is quick, so do it.

Leaving the notice paragraph off destroys the form

The last sentence of the notice block is a rule about the document rather than a warning to the signer. The failure to include this notice language on the face of the form shall render the form unenforceable and invalid as a waiver and release under section 85-7-419.

That cuts both ways, and it is the one place in the statute where the drafting error is somebody else's problem. If a general contractor hands you a tidy one page Mississippi waiver with no block capitals at the bottom, that document is not a statutory waiver. The forms below print the paragraph because the statute prints it.

It is also why substantially following the form is not an invitation to trim. The blanks are flexible. The notice is not.

What the advance waiver rule does and does not reach

Section 85-7-419(1) is blunt. A right to claim a lien or to claim upon a bond may not be waived in advance of furnishing labor, services or materials, and any purported waiver made in advance is null, void and unenforceable. The bond half matters, because a bond claim is what you have left on a job where there is no lien to file.

Subsection (4) then protects three things the ban does not touch. A subordination of your lien rights to another party's interest stands, even signed in advance and even unpaid, because subordinating is ranking rather than waiving. A waiver given to settle a bona fide dispute about the amount due for work already furnished stands, because that is a negotiated settlement rather than a precondition. And the cancellation or release of a lien you already recorded stands, because that is a real lien being traded.

Subsection (5)(d) closes off the question everybody asks next. Nothing in the section shortens the time within which to file a claim of lien. The sixty day clock is about the waiver, not about your lien deadline. They are two dates and both get tracked.

Notes from the statute text itself

Each form starts with the state and county, then an employment paragraph naming the contractor who hired you, what you furnished, the project, the city and county, and the owner. Then it stops and gives you a rule for the legal description, with an instruction telling you to use a metes and bounds description, the land lot district, block and lot number, or the street address of the project. Any of those three is acceptable to the form.

All three are notarized. The signature block is captioned rather than labeled, with a printed name under BY and a printed title under ITS, and a separate notary line below.

A curiosity for anyone comparing this page with the raw statute: the waiver and release upon final payment is codified with its signature block printed twice, once before the notice paragraph and once after it. It is an artifact of the 2014 act that created these sections, not a second signature that anyone expects. The form below prints one.

Questions people ask

Count the sixty days: Mississippi waiver deadline calculator

Working outside Mississippi? The general lien waiver forms cover the states that prescribe no wording, and conditional vs unconditional lien waiver explains which of the two to sign.