Missouri unconditional final lien waiver for residential property, free
Missouri prescribes exactly one waiver form, and it is the most dangerous document on this site. It is the unconditional final waiver for residential real property, and the statute describes it as complete and absolute.
An unconditional final lien waiver is only valid if it is on a form substantially as the statute prescribes. Once valid it is a complete and absolute waiver of lien rights against that property, including rights that would otherwise arise from later remedial or additional work.
Read the law: Missouri Revised Statutes section 429.016revisor.mo.gov
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Which of the Missouri forms you need
- Unconditional Final Lien Waiver for Residential Real Property. The final payment has cleared. This is the end of your lien rights on the job, so check the amount against your own ledger before it is signed.
Working in Missouri on a repair, remodel or addition to an owner-occupied home of four units or less? Then the waiver is only half the paperwork. RSMo 429.012(1) makes you hand the owner a notice to owner before you take payment in any form of any kind, and subsection 2 makes doing that a condition precedent to the creation, existence or validity of your own mechanic's lien.
Hiring anybody under you on a Missouri repair, remodel or addition to an owner-occupied home of four units or less? Get the consent of owner signed before they start. RSMo 429.013(2) gives no lien at all to anyone but the original contractor unless an owner has agreed in writing to be liable, in the statute's own words, and subsection 4 makes full payment to you a complete defense to every one of their liens without it.
Read the reach of it before you sign
The statute spells this out in one sentence. An unconditional final lien waiver is a complete and absolute waiver of any mechanic's lien rights, including any rights which might otherwise arise from remedial or additional labor, services or materials provided to the property under the same agreement or under a supplemental agreement between the same parties entered into before the waiver was executed.
In plain terms: sign this, go back next month to fix something under the same contract, and you have no lien for that work either. Most waivers release the past. This one reaches forward.
Only this form is prescribed
Missouri does not prescribe a conditional waiver, a progress waiver or a commercial waiver. It says a claimant may waive lien rights by a partial or full waiver, conditional or unconditional, and then says an unconditional final waiver is only valid on this form.
So on a Missouri job the one document the legislature wrote out is the one that ends everything, and every other waiver you sign is whatever the parties agreed it is. Read those carefully. Nothing in the statute is rescuing you from a badly drafted one.
Partial payment does not equal a waiver
There is a limit worth knowing. A waiver of lien rights is not to be interpreted as waiving or releasing lien rights in exchange for a payment of less than the amount claimed due at the time, unless the waiver is an unconditional final waiver complying with the section.
Accepting a part payment, on its own, does not surrender the balance.
Questions people ask
Does the Missouri waiver cover work I do after signing?
Yes, where the later work is under the same agreement or a supplemental agreement between the same parties entered into before you signed. RSMo 429.016 says so expressly. This is unusual and it is the main reason to date and scope the document carefully.
Is there a Missouri statutory conditional waiver?
No. Only the unconditional final residential form is prescribed. Anything else is a matter of contract between you and your customer.
Does it apply to commercial jobs?
The prescribed form is written for residential real property. On a commercial job whatever you sign is governed by its own terms rather than by this form.
Does the Missouri waiver have to be notarized?
The prescribed waiver form ends at a signature, a title and a date, with no notarial block. Missouri does require a notarized signature on the separate notice of rights form, which is a different document doing a different job, so do not let the two get confused.
Working outside Missouri? 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.