Washington notice of right to claim a lien, free and word for word from RCW 60.04.031

The sixty days run backward, which is not how most states do this

Almost every preliminary notice statute in the country sets a deadline counted forward from your first day on the job. Twenty days in Arizona, forty five in Florida, the fifteenth of the second month in Texas. Miss it and the argument is about whether you missed it.

Washington wrote the opposite rule. Subsection (1) says the notice may be given at any time. There is no day you are too late. What there is instead is a line drawn sixty days behind whatever day you send it, and everything you furnished before that line is unprotected.

Read as a working rule, that means the notice never becomes pointless and it never stops costing you. On a job you started in March, a notice sent in September still protects everything from July forward, which on most jobs is where the unbilled money actually is. Sixty days later that same notice would protect two months less.

So the practical answer is not send it within sixty days. It is send it now, then send nothing else, because subsection (1) protects everything supplied after the line and everything supplied afterward. One notice, sent early, covers the whole job.

One exception shortens the window hard. On new construction of a single-family residence, the last sentence of subsection (1) replaces the sixty days with ten. A supplier who waits a month on a new house has lost almost everything a notice could have saved.

Who does not have to send one, and the exception hiding inside the exception

Subsection (2) lists three groups that owe no notice at all. Persons who contract directly with the owner or the owner's common law agent. Laborers whose claim of lien is based solely on performing labor. Subcontractors who contract for the improvement of real property directly with the prime contractor.

That third one is where people stop reading, and the sentence does not stop there. It ends except as provided in subsection (3)(b) of this section. A subcontractor hired straight by the prime owes no notice on a commercial job or a new house, and owes one on the repair, alteration or remodel of an existing owner-occupied single-family residence. Same contract, same relationship, different property, opposite answer.

Notice also who is not on the exempt list. Suppliers are not. Equipment rental is not. Architects, engineers, surveyors and testing firms are not, and subsection (1) names professional services first. If you never signed anything with the owner and you are not swinging a hammer for wages, assume you owe a notice until you have read subsection (2) and found yourself in it.

The laborer exemption is narrower than it reads. It covers a claim of lien based solely on performing labor. A crew that also supplied the material is outside it, and so is a labor broker billing for other people's hours.

The owner-occupied remodel rule, and the three days that decide the money

Subsection (3) is about one kind of property: the repair, alteration or remodel of an existing owner-occupied single-family residence or appurtenant garage. Not a new house. Not a rental. Not a duplex. The house the owner is living in while you work on it.

Paragraph (a) says a person who contracts directly with the owner-occupier or their common law agent needs no notice and has a lien for the full amount due under their contract. Paragraph (b) says everybody else has to give the notice, and then limits what the lien can reach: liens of persons who do not contract directly with the owner-occupier may only be satisfied from amounts not yet paid to the prime contractor by the owner at the time the notice is received, regardless of whether those amounts are due.

So on this one kind of job the notice is not protecting the debt. It is freezing a pot. Whatever the owner still owes the general on the day the notice lands is what you can reach, and every draw the owner pays out before that day is out of reach forever. A notice sent one week earlier is worth one draw more.

Received is defined right there and it is worth the ten seconds. It means actual receipt by personal service, or registered or certified mail, or three days after mailing by registered or certified mail, excluding Saturdays, Sundays, or legal holidays. Mail it on a Thursday and the three days do not land until the following Tuesday. If you know a draw is going out, personal service with a signed receipt is the version that lands today.

Two ways to serve it, and the statute names no third

Subsection (1)(a) is mailing the notice by certified or registered mail to the owner or reputed owner. Subsection (1)(b) is delivering or serving the notice personally upon the owner or reputed owner and obtaining evidence of delivery in the form of a receipt or other acknowledgment signed by the owner or reputed owner or an affidavit of service.

First class mail is not on that list. Neither is email, a text message, or handing it to the superintendent in the job trailer. Washington is stricter here than Arizona, which allows first class with a certificate of mailing, and the reason is that both Washington methods produce a date somebody else certified.

Reputed owner is doing real work in that sentence, the same way it does in Arizona. You are not required to be right about who holds title. You are required to send it to the person who appears to own the property, which means a county parcel lookup is enough diligence and a title search is not the standard.

Keep the green card or the affidavit with the job file, not with the accounting. Under RCW 60.04.091 the notice is not something you attach to the lien, but the date you gave it is the date your sixty day window was measured from, and that is the fact somebody will want proved.

If the prime contractor is in compliance with RCW 19.27.095, 60.04.230 and 60.04.261, subsection (1) says the notice shall also be given to the prime, unless you contracted directly with the prime. Sending a second copy costs one more certified mailing and removes the argument entirely, so send it.

The ten-point type rule, and why this form obeys it

Subsection (4) does something almost no notice statute does. It says the notice shall include but not be limited to the following information and shall substantially be in the following form, using lower-case and upper-case ten-point type where appropriate.

That is a printing order, not a drafting order, and it is the reason this page publishes the statute's own form rather than a template that means the same thing. A form with the right words set in eight point to fit the page is not the form subsection (4) describes.

The PDF here is set in ten point body type. It was already, because ten point is what every form on this site uses, but the floor is now recorded against this page rather than left as a coincidence of the default.

The other thing subsection (4) settles is the page count. The form carries IMPORTANT INFORMATION ON REVERSE SIDE in its own heading, and then prints the reverse side: the explanation of the lien laws, the line about the Department of Labor and Industries, and the two common methods, dual paychecks and lien releases. The PDF breaks to page two exactly where the statute does. A one page version of this notice is missing text the statute prints.

What the notice is actually protecting: ninety days, fourteen days, eight months

The notice keeps a lien right alive. RCW 60.04.091 is where you use it. Every person claiming a lien under RCW 60.04.021 shall file for recording, in the county where the property is located, a notice of claim of lien not later than ninety days after the person has ceased to furnish labor, professional services, materials, or equipment, or the last date employee benefit contributions were due.

That sentence has a second half most people never reach: the period provided for recording the claim of lien is a period of limitation and no action to foreclose a lien shall be maintained unless the claim of lien is filed for recording within the ninety-day period stated. It is not a filing convention. It is the limitation itself.

Then fourteen days. The lien claimant shall give a copy of the claim of lien to the owner or reputed owner by certified or registered mail or by personal service within fourteen days of the time the claim is filed for recording, and failure to do so results in a forfeiture of any right the claimant may have to attorneys' fees and costs against the owner under RCW 60.04.181. The lien survives. The fee award does not, and on a small claim the fee award is most of the reason to bring it.

RCW 60.04.141 ends it. No lien binds the property for longer than eight calendar months after the claim of lien has been recorded, unless an action is filed within that time in the superior court in the county where the property is, and service is made upon the owner within ninety days of the date of filing. Filing alone is not enough. The ninety day service is part of the same sentence.

Two smaller facts in that section are worth knowing. If credit is given and its terms are stated in the claim of lien, the eight months run from the expiration of that credit instead. And the period is tolled by the filing of any petition under Title Eleven of the United States Code by an owner of property subject to the lien, which is the one thing that stops the clock.

The lender notice almost nobody sends, and what it does

RCW 60.04.221 is a second, separate notice, and it is aimed at the money rather than the property. Any potential lien claimant who has not received a payment within five days after the date required by their contract, invoice, employee benefit plan agreement or purchase order may, within thirty-five days of the date required for payment, give notice of the sums due and to become due.

It goes in writing to the lender at the office administering the interim or construction financing, with a copy to the owner and the appropriate prime contractor, by certified or registered mail or by personal delivery with a signed receipt or an affidavit of service.

Subsection (5) is what makes it worth the stamp. After receipt of the notice, the lender shall withhold from the next and subsequent draws the amount claimed to be due, or obtain a payment bond for your benefit covering it. The obligation reaches only funds that remain undisbursed as of the date the lender receives the notice, which is one more reason speed is the whole strategy in this state.

Subsection (7) is the penalty on the lender. If the lender fails to abide by it, the mortgage or deed of trust securing the lender is subordinated to your lien to the extent of the financing wrongfully disbursed, up to the amount stated in your notice plus costs and reasonable attorneys' fees.

Subsection (8) is the penalty on you, and it is why this is not a form to fire off casually. A potential lien claimant is liable for loss, cost or expense including reasonable attorneys' fees to a party injured by any unjust, excessive or premature notice. Subsection (9) lets an owner, contractor, lender or claimant move for an order to show cause why the notice should not be declared void, on six to fifteen days notice. The notice of right to claim a lien on this page carries none of that exposure, because subsection (8) says expressly that notice as used there does not include notice of the right to claim liens where no actual claim is made.

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