Mechanics lien deadlines: four states, four different calendars

A mechanics lien is the only leverage most subcontractors ever have, and it is the one that expires on a fixed date. Miss it and the debt does not disappear — but the security does, and with it the reason anyone returns your calls.

The deadlines are state law. They are not variations on a theme; they are built on different clocks. California counts days from an event. Texas counts to the fifteenth of a month. Florida asks for a notice within 45 days of starting and a lien within 90 days of finishing. New York gives you eight months, unless it is a house, in which case four.

That is why an article with one number would be worse than no article at all.

The four calendars side by side

Retainage limits and release timing are their own state-by-state question, covered separately: retainage limits: 10 percent in Texas, 5 percent in New York.

Read the second row again. In California a subcontractor's outer limit is the same 90 days as the general's — but a recorded notice of completion cuts it to 30 days for the sub and only to 60 for the general. The owner controls when your clock shortens, and you find out by watching the county recorder.

California: the notice that decides how much you can claim

California separates two questions that other states blend: may you claim and how much may you claim.

Who must be served. Civil Code § 8200 requires a claimant to give preliminary notice to:

"(1) The owner or reputed owner. (2) The direct contractor or reputed direct contractor to which the claimant provides work, either directly or through one or more subcontractors. (3) The construction lender or reputed construction lender, if any."

Laborers are excepted, and a claimant in a direct contractual relationship with the owner need only notify the construction lender, if there is one.

What happens if you are late. This is the provision worth taping to the wall. Under § 8204, a claimant who does not give timely preliminary notice is:

"entitled to record a lien, give a stop payment notice, and assert a claim against a payment bond only for work performed within 20 days prior to the service of the preliminary notice"

So lateness does not void the lien. It amputates it. Four months of work on a job, notice served in month five, and everything before the last twenty days is outside the security. A sub who serves the notice on day one of every job never has to think about this again.

Recording the lien. For a direct contractor, § 8412 requires recording "after the contractor completes the direct contract, and before the earlier of" ninety days after completion of the work of improvement, or sixty days after the owner records a notice of completion or cessation. For everyone else, § 8414 requires recording after the claimant ceases to provide work and before the earlier of ninety days after completion, or thirty days after a recorded notice of completion or cessation. The full preliminary-notice mechanics and the twenty-day look-back are covered in California mechanics lien: three deadlines, two set by the owner.

Texas: stop counting days and start counting months

The Texas system confuses people from other states because it never asks how many days have elapsed. It asks which month the work fell in, and then counts whole months forward to a fixed day.

The lien affidavit — § 53.052:

• original contractor, non-residential: "not later than the 15th day of the fourth month after the month in which the original contractor's work was completed, terminated, or abandoned";
• original contractor, residential: "not later than the 15th day of the third month";
• other claimants, non-residential: the 15th day of the fourth month after the later of the month they last provided labor or materials, or the month specially fabricated materials should have been delivered;
• other claimants, residential: the 15th day of the third month after the same events;
• claims for retainage: the 15th day of the third month after the month in which the original contract was completed, terminated or abandoned.

The pre-lien notice — § 53.056(a-1): a derivative claimant must send notice of unpaid labor or materials "not later than the 15th day of the third month after the month during which" the labor or materials were provided — the second month for residential construction. The notice goes to both the owner or reputed owner and the original contractor.

Two operational consequences follow from a month-based system:

1. Work supplied on the 1st and on the 30th share a deadline. Texas is generous at the end of a month and brutal at the beginning of one.
2. Continuous work resets nothing. Each month of supply generates its own notice obligation. On a job running February to June you are sending notices all the way through, not one at the end. The month-counting system in full, including the separate retainage deadline and the fund-trapping notice, is in Texas mechanics lien: stop counting days, count months.

Florida: two clocks running in opposite directions

Florida is the state where the deadline most often passes without anyone noticing, because the first one starts at the beginning of the work.

Notice to owner — § 713.06(2)(a): all lienors under that section, except laborers, "as a prerequisite to perfecting a lien … must serve a notice on the owner", and:

"The notice must be served before commencing, or not later than 45 days after commencing, to furnish his or her labor, services, or materials"

Forty-five days after you start. Not after you finish, not after you invoice, not after the payment fails to arrive. By the time a payment problem is visible on a normal net-30 cycle, this window may already be closed.

Claim of lien — § 713.08(5):

"The claim of lien may be recorded at any time during the progress of the work or thereafter but not later than 90 days after the final furnishing of the labor or services or materials by the lienor."

Note "final furnishing … by the lienor". Your own last day on site, not the job's completion.

New York: the longest window, and the trap inside it

New York Lien Law § 10 allows a notice of lien to be filed "at any time during the progress of the work and the furnishing of the materials, or, within eight months after the completion" of the work or furnishing of materials.

Where the property is improved with a single family dwelling, the same section gives four months instead of eight.

Both periods run from "the last item of work performed or materials furnished."

Eight months feels comfortable. That is the trap: the residential carve-out halves it, and residential work is precisely the segment where a small contractor is least likely to check the statute. If your job is a house, assume four.

For retainage, § 10 also allows a lien to be filed "within ninety days after the date the retainage was due to be released" — a separate clock that survives the main one.

What this means for how you run jobs

You cannot memorize four systems. A lien is also not the only lever: prompt payment interest is often faster and cheaper, and it runs on its own state-by-state numbers — see state prompt payment laws, the same 7 days, three penalties. You can build three habits that work in all of them.

1. Record the start date, the last-work date and the completion date for every job, separately, and in a place you can query. Every deadline above is measured from one of those three, and businesses routinely have none of them written down.
2. Serve the early notice as a matter of routine at mobilization, in every state that has one. It is free, it is never harmful, and in California it is the difference between a full lien and twenty days of it.
3. Watch for the owner's filing. In California a recorded notice of completion shortens a subcontractor's window from ninety days to thirty. Nobody will tell you it was recorded.

And one rule about scope: if a job crosses a state line, the deadlines come from the state where the property sits, not where your office is or where the contract was signed.

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Current as of August 29, 2026. This article describes mechanics lien deadlines in California, Texas, Florida and New York only, and is not legal advice. It does not cover the other forty-six states, public projects and payment bond claims (which run on different rules), the content and service requirements for each notice, or the separate deadline to enforce a lien by suit once it is filed — which exists in every state discussed here and is shorter than most contractors expect. Lien statutes are amended frequently and the consequences of missing a deadline are usually absolute. Consult a construction attorney in the state where the property is located.

What Zirko does: it holds jobs with their dates, documents and files in one place, so the start date, the last-work date and the completion date of a job are recorded rather than reconstructed. Zirko does not track lien deadlines, does not warn you before one expires, does not prepare or serve notices, and gives no legal advice. Issued documents are immutable; a correction is a separate document, so the payment history of a disputed job stays intact.