Ohio affidavit for mechanics' lien, free and word for word from ORC 1311.06

What the affidavit has to show, and what it can get wrong

ORC 1311.06(A) lists six things. The amount due over and above all legal setoffs. A description of the property to be charged with the lien. The name and address of the person to or for whom the labor or work was performed or material was furnished, which on a subcontractor's affidavit is whoever hired you, not the owner. The name of the owner, part owner, or lessee, if known. The name and address of the lien claimant. And the first and last dates the claimant performed any labor or work or furnished any material to the improvement.

The statute is generous about one of those and unforgiving about another. It says that if the affidavit is recorded, the omission or inaccuracy of any address in the affidavit does not affect its validity, so a wrong street number for the owner is not fatal. Nothing in the section says the same about the amount, the dates, or the description.

The description is the answer that gets this wrong most often. Division (D) says the description is sufficient if made in accordance with division (B)(1) of section 1311.04, and that division defines a legal description as one sufficient to describe the real property for the purpose of conveyance, or contained in the instrument by which the owner, part owner, or lessee took title. A mailing address is neither. The lot and plat book reference, or the description copied off the deed, is what belongs on the rules on this form, and the parcel number and street address are worth adding under it rather than instead of it.

The word counties in division (A) is plural on purpose. An improvement that crosses a county line is filed in each county the improved property is located in, and the affidavit is the same in both.

Sixty, seventy-five, or one hundred twenty days

Division (B)(1) is sixty days from the date on which the last labor or work was performed or material was furnished, if the lien arises in connection with a one- or two-family dwelling or in connection with a residential unit of condominium property as defined in Chapter 5311 of the Revised Code. That is the short one and it is the one residential trades are on.

Division (B)(3) is seventy-five days from the same date for a lien not described in division (B)(1) or (2), which is commercial work, industrial work, apartment buildings above two units, and everything else that is not somebody's house.

Division (B)(2) is one hundred twenty days, and it applies only if the lien arises under section 1311.021, the oil and gas well lien. If you are not working on a well, it is not your deadline.

There is no extension anywhere in the section and no version of the clock that starts later. Compare that with the notice of furnishing in ORC 1311.05, where serving late still preserves a rolling twenty-one day window of recent work. Nothing here rolls. File on day seventy-six on a commercial job and there is no lien at all.

Filing is only two thirds of it

ORC 1311.07 is one paragraph and it is the step people skip. Any person filing an affidavit pursuant to section 1311.06 shall serve a copy of the affidavit on the owner, part owner, or lessee of the improved property or the designee, within thirty days after filing the affidavit.

If it cannot be served in accordance with section 1311.19, the same paragraph says the person shall serve the copy by posting it in some conspicuous place on the premises of the improved property within ten days after the expiration of the thirty days. So an owner who cannot be found does not end the duty, it changes the method, and the window to do it is forty days from filing rather than thirty.

Section 1311.19(A) sets the methods: the sheriff of the county where the person resides or maintains a principal place of business, or certified or registered mail, overnight delivery service, hand delivery, or any other method which includes a written evidence of receipt. Certified mail on a notice of furnishing is complete on the date of mailing, but that exception in division (B) is written for sections 1311.05 and 1311.261 only. For a copy of this affidavit, service is complete on receipt, so mail it early in the thirty days and not on day twenty-nine.

Keep the recorder's stamped copy, the certified mail receipt, and if it came to posting, a dated photograph of the posted copy on the premises. The file is the proof that all three steps happened in the order the chapter asks for.

Six years, unless somebody starts the sixty-day clock

ORC 1311.13(C) says liens under sections 1311.01 to 1311.22 continue in force for six years after an affidavit is filed in the office of the county recorder under section 1311.06, and if an action is brought to enforce the lien within that time, the lien continues in force until final adjudication.

Six years is a long time to sit on a recorded lien, and the owner is not obliged to let you. Section 1311.11(A) lets the owner, part owner, lessee, mortgagee, or any other person with an interest in the property, or a contractor who has posted security, notify the lienholder to commence suit on the lien. Service is by the sheriff, or by certified mail at the sheriff's hand on request, and it goes to the address of the lienholder as shown in the affidavit of lien.

That is the sentence that turns an inaccurate address from harmless into expensive. Division (B) of 1311.11 says that if the lienholder fails to commence suit upon the lien within sixty days after completion of service of the notice to commence suit, or if the action is commenced but dismissed with prejudice before adjudication, the lien is void and the property is wholly discharged from the lien. The address you put on this form is where that notice will arrive.

Losing the lien is not losing the debt. The same division says that when a lien is void by reason of failure to commence suit within sixty days, the claim upon which the lien was founded is not prejudiced by the failure, except for the loss of the lien as security for the claim. You still have a contract claim. You no longer have the property behind it.

What the lien is worth depends on a date you did not choose

Ohio does not rank liens by who filed first. Section 1311.13(A)(1) says liens for labor, work, or materials furnished to the same improvement before the notice of commencement was recorded are effective from the date the first visible work or labor is performed or the first materials are furnished by the first original contractor, subcontractor, material supplier, or laborer on the improvement. Not by you. By whoever was there first.

Division (A)(2) is the other case: liens for labor, work, or materials furnished after the notice of commencement is recorded are effective from the date of the recording of that notice. So on a job with a recorded notice of commencement, everybody who came afterward shares one effective date, and the question of who filed the affidavit first stops mattering.

Division (B)(1) covers the claimant who was on both sides of that line, and it is worth reading before you apply a payment. A lien securing the claim of a claimant who performed work or furnished materials both before and after the recording has two effective dates, and any payment received by the lien claimant, before or after the filing of a lien, shall be applied first to the labor or work performed or materials furnished prior to the filing of the notice of commencement. The older, better-ranked half of your claim is the half a part payment eats first.

Laborers get a carve-out in divisions (A)(3) and (B)(2). A laborer's lien for work on both sides of the recording has one effective date, the early one in division (A)(1), and a laborer who files after the notice of commencement still takes the early date where a valid unreleased lien with that date exists.

Houses, and the rule that can take the lien away before you file

ORC 1311.011(B)(1) is the reason residential work in Ohio is harder than the deadline makes it look. On an improvement made under a home construction contract, no subcontractor, material supplier, or laborer has a lien once the owner has paid the original contractor in full, if that payment was made before the owner received a copy of the lien affidavit.

Read the order of events in that sentence. It is not the filing that protects you, it is the owner receiving a copy, which is the step section 1311.07 gives you thirty days for. On a house where the owner is still holding money, a copy that arrives this week is worth more than a filing that sits unserved for a month.

A home construction contract under section 1311.011(A)(1) is a contract between an original contractor and an owner, part owner, or lessee for the improvement of a single- or double-family dwelling or a portion of one, or a residential unit of condominium property submitted to Chapter 5311, together with driveways, sidewalks, swimming pools, porches, garages, carports, landscaping, fences, fallout shelters, siding, roofing, storm windows and awnings adjacent to it, where the dwelling, unit, or land is used or intended to be used as a personal residence by the owner, part owner, or lessee.

The same definition is what takes most residential jobs out of the notice of furnishing requirement in ORC 1311.05(E). So on a house you usually owe no notice of furnishing and you get sixty days rather than seventy-five for the affidavit, and the protection you gave up is the one in 1311.011(B)(1). It is a worse trade than it sounds.

Laborers, and the affidavit that carries more than one claim

Division (F) exists so that a crew does not need a lawyer each. One or more laborers may authorize an agent to prepare, execute, file, and serve the affidavit required by this section, so a union representative, a bookkeeper, or one of the crew can sign and file for the rest.

The same division lets one affidavit carry several people: the affidavit may set forth the claims of one or more laborers, provided that the affidavit separately itemizes the claim of each laborer. Separately itemizes is the condition, so a single total for six people is not what the statute asked for. A schedule attached to the affidavit naming each laborer and each amount is.

It also reaches money an hourly worker would not think of as a lien claim. The affidavit may set forth claims for wages that are contractually due but are unpaid, so a rate set by a contract or an agreement, rather than what was actually paid, is what the claim is measured against.

Division (E) closes the section with a sentence aimed at the other side: no exemptions apply against any lien under this chapter. Homestead and the other exemptions that would defeat an ordinary judgment do not defeat this.

What the form asks you for

A venue line, one long sworn sentence, four rules for the description, and a jurat. The top is State of Ohio and the county, which is the county you swear it in rather than the county the property is in, and the two are often different. The ss: after it is the statute's own abbreviation and it stays.

The sworn sentence starts with the person signing and that person's address, then the lien claimant, which is the business. On a one-person company those are the same name twice and the form still asks for both. Then whoever you contracted with and that party's address, which the statute describes as the owner, part owner, lessee, original contractor, subcontractor, or other person, as the case may be, because the same form is used by everyone from the general contractor down.

Then two dates in three pieces each, the first day and the last day you worked or delivered on the improvement. Then the amount due over and above all legal setoffs, which is not your invoice total if there is a credit or a backcharge you accept. Then the owner, part owner, or lessee, if known.

The four rules under described as follows are for the legal description, and the builder puts your answer on the first of them. The three rules after the jurat are drawn by the statute with no caption over them at all, which is where the notary and the affiant sign. Nothing has been written into them here, because guessing what the statute left blank would be adding words to a statutory form.

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 Ohio statutory lien waiver forms, and conditional vs unconditional lien waiver for which of the two to sign.