Wisconsin prime contractor notice, the wording your contract has to carry

Nothing to fill in, and that was measured

Every builder page on this site has blanks on it. This one has none. Paragraph (2)(a) says it shall be in substantially the following language and then prints the notice in full, with no rule, no caption and no space to write a name in. The page above shows exactly that paragraph and the PDF is the same paragraph on a sheet.

That was measured before it was built rather than assumed. The findlaw text and the state's own chapter 779 PDF were compared character by character: 787 letters and digits on each side, identical, and zero blank runs on either publisher. The two copies are thirteen years apart, the state's from a 2012 electronic reproduction and findlaw's current as of 1 January 2025, so an amendment in between would have broken the match.

Read the notice and you can hear who is speaking. It says claimant hereby notifies owner and in addition to the undersigned claimant, because the prime contractor who signed with the owner is the one giving it. There is nobody to name in the text because the notice is already sitting inside your contract, with your name at the top of it.

It belongs inside the written contract, and on a sheet only if there is not one

The statute puts the two routes in order and the first is not the sheet. The prime contractor shall include in any written contract with the owner the notice required by this paragraph, and shall provide the owner with a copy of the written contract. Both halves are in the same sentence and the second one is easy to skip: the words go into the contract document, and the owner gets a copy of that document.

Only if no written contract for the work of improvement is entered into does the notice get prepared separately. Then it is served on the owner or authorized agent within 10 days after the first labor, services, materials, plans, or specifications are performed, furnished, or procured for the improvement by or pursuant to the authority of the prime contractor.

That is why there is a copy button above the wording and a download button beside it. Copy is for the ordinary case, where the paragraph is pasted into the contract you already use. The PDF is for the case the statute treats as second: a handshake job where the sheet has to travel on its own, and where the 10 day clock is running from the first day anybody did anything on your authority.

Eight point bold, or capital letters if it is typed

The notice, whether included in a written contract or separately given, shall be in at least 8-point bold type, if printed, or in capital letters, if typewritten. Both routes carry the rule, which matters most for the version that lives inside a contract, because that is the one likely to be set in the same face as everything around it and quietly fall under the floor.

The PDF here is printed rather than typewritten, so it takes the printed branch: at least 8 point, and bold. If you paste the wording into your own contract, that is the rule to carry across with it. Bold, and no smaller than 8 point.

Minnesota asks for 10 point bold on its equivalent notice and Wisconsin asks for 8, which is worth knowing if you work both states off one contract template. The smaller floor is not permission to shrink the rest of the page down to meet it.

Who has to give it: two conditions, and both have to be true

The opening line has two limbs joined by and. It reaches every prime contractor who enters into a contract with the owner for a work of improvement on the owner's land, and who has contracted or will contract with any subcontractors, suppliers, or service providers to perform, furnish, or procure labor, services, materials, plans, or specifications for the work of improvement.

A contractor in direct contract with the owner who does the whole job with an own crew and buys nothing for it is outside the words. The second limb is written in two tenses, has contracted or will contract, so it is not answered by looking at what you have signed so far. If you expect to buy materials for this job or put anybody under you on it, it applies.

The practical reading is that almost every general contractor on a small Wisconsin residential job is inside it, because almost every job has a supplier invoice on it somewhere. The exceptions in subsection (1) are where the real narrowing happens, and they are about the job rather than about you.

Five exceptions, and the big one is anything over four units or any nonresidential work

Subsection (1) is headed Exceptions to notice requirement and says the notice required under sub. (2) shall not be required to be given in the following cases only. Five of them, and the word only is doing work: this is the whole list.

Paragraph (c) is the one that decides most jobs. No notice is required by any lien claimant on an improvement in any case where more than 4 family living units are to be provided or added by such work of improvement, if the improvement is wholly residential in character, or in any case where the improvement is partly or wholly nonresidential in character. Read plainly, that puts every commercial job and every mixed use job outside the notice requirement entirely, and leaves it as a small residential rule: four units or fewer, wholly residential.

The other four are narrower. Paragraph (a) excuses any laborer or mechanic employed by any prime contractor or subcontractor. Paragraph (b) excuses a lien claimant who contracted directly with the owner, unless the claimant is a prime contractor subject to (2)(a), which is the sentence that keeps you in. Paragraph (d) excuses a prime contractor who is personally an owner of the land, a corporate prime contractor of which an owner is an officer or controlling shareholder, a prime contractor who is an officer or controlling shareholder of a corporation which owns the land, and a corporate prime contractor managed or controlled by substantially the same persons who manage or control the owning corporation. Paragraph (e) excuses everybody under a prime contractor on a project where that prime contractor is not required to give notice.

Paragraph (e) is worth saying out loud because it is the quiet consequence of the rest. If the job is one where you as prime are excused, your subs and suppliers are excused from their own 60 day notice too, and the whole notice machinery sits out that job.

What the owner does with it, and what your lender does

The notice tells the owner that more notices are coming and what to do with them: owner probably will receive notices from those who perform, furnish, or procure labor, services, materials, plans, or specifications for the construction, and should give a copy of each notice received to the mortgage lender, if any. That is not decoration. Paragraph (2)(b) puts the same duty on the owner in binding words, within 10 days after receipt.

Paragraph (2)(d) then points the same requirement at the bank. Every mortgage lender making an improvement or construction loan shall make reasonable inquiry of the owner as to whether any notices required by this subsection have been given, and a lender is not required to pay out any loan proceeds unless or until the prime contractor has given any notice required of the prime contractor by this subsection.

So the missing notice is not only a lien problem waiting six months to appear. On a financed job it is a draw problem this month, because the lender is entitled to hold the money until it can see the notice was given. That is the practical reason to have the paragraph in the contract template rather than in a folder.

The money you receive is a trust fund, and misusing it is theft

Subsection (5) is headed Theft by contractors and it is the sharpest sentence in the section. The proceeds of any mortgage on land paid to any prime contractor or any subcontractor for improvements upon the mortgaged premises, and all moneys paid by any owner for improvements, constitute a trust fund in the hands of that contractor to the amount of all claims due or to become due for labor, services, materials, plans and specifications used for the improvements, until all the claims have been paid.

Using that money for any other purpose before those claims are paid in full, or proportionally in a deficiency, is theft by the prime contractor or subcontractor of moneys so misappropriated and is punishable under s. 943.20. Amounts that are the subject of a bona fide dispute are carved out, and only to the extent actually in dispute.

It reaches people, not just companies. If the contractor is a corporation, limited liability company or other entity other than a sole proprietorship, the misappropriation is also deemed theft by any officers, directors, members, partners or agents responsible for it. Money that reached a shareholder, member or partner who was not responsible is still a civil liability of that person and can be recovered back into the trust fund by any interested party.

Robbing one job to finish another is the ordinary way a small contractor gets here, and Wisconsin has written that exact move into the criminal code.

If somebody under you files a lien, defending it is your bill

Subsection (6) is short and most contractors have never read it. Where a lien is filed under this subchapter by any person other than the prime contractor, the prime contractor shall defend any action brought at the contractor's own expense, and during the pendency of the action the owner may withhold from the prime contractor the amount of money for which the lien is filed, plus reasonable costs.

There is one way out of it in the same subsection, and it is fair: this does not apply if the lien is the result of the owner's failure to comply with the payment provisions of the contract. If the owner did not pay you and that is why your sub is unpaid, the bill is not yours.

Subsection (7) is the other consequence worth knowing about materials. Purchasing materials on credit and representing at the time of purchase that they are to be used in a designated improvement, and then using them in some other improvement without the written consent of the seller, is punishable by a fine of not more than $300 or imprisonment for not more than 3 months.

The other Wisconsin notice, and the two deadlines after it

Paragraph (2)(b) is the other half of this subsection and it belongs to the people under you. It is the 60 day notice to owner, in 2 signed copies, and it has its own page here. If you are the prime contractor on the job, your subs and suppliers are the ones who owe that one, and your notice is the warning to the owner that theirs are coming.

Paragraph (2)(e) puts a small duty back on you. Every prime contractor and subcontractor, at the time of purchasing or contracting for any materials, shall upon request deliver to the supplier a description of the real estate on which the materials are to be used and the name and post-office address of the owner and authorized agent. Failure to receive it does not relieve the supplier from giving timely notice, so a supplier who asks and is ignored still has to serve, which is usually how the request turns into a phone call.

After all of that come the deadlines in 779.06, and they apply to you too. A claim for lien is filed with the clerk of circuit court within 6 months of your last labor or material, an action on it is brought within 2 years of filing, and a copy of the claim is served on the owner within 30 days after filing. Before any of that, 779.06(2) requires a written notice of intent to file a lien claim served on the owner at least 30 days before the claim is filed, and it says in terms that this notice is required whether or not a 779.02 notice was already 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 Wisconsin statutory lien waiver forms, and conditional vs unconditional lien waiver for which of the two to sign.