Colorado Mechanics Lien Law: Notice, Filing, and Deadlines

Colorado mechanics lien law, codified in Article 38-22 of the Colorado Revised Statutes, lets contractors, subcontractors, suppliers, and design professionals secure payment for construction work by placing a lien on the property and, if necessary, forcing its sale. The rules are strict, the deadlines are short, and a single procedural slip can wipe out the claim entirely. If you want the lien to hold up, you need to serve a written notice of intent at least ten days before filing, record a sworn lien statement within four months of your last work on the project, and file a foreclosure action with a lis pendens within six months of that same date.

Who Can Claim a Lien

Colorado’s list of eligible claimants is broad. Anyone who furnishes labor, materials, machinery, tools, or equipment for a construction project on private property can claim a lien. That covers general contractors, subcontractors, material suppliers, equipment rental companies, and laborers. Architects, engineers, draftsmen, and surveyors qualify as well when they provide designs, plans, specifications, cost estimates, or construction oversight.¹

You do not need a direct contract with the property owner. Every contractor, subcontractor, architect, engineer, or agent in charge of construction work is treated as the owner’s agent for lien purposes, which is what allows parties further down the chain to lien the owner’s property even though the owner never hired them.¹

The Ten-Day Notice of Intent

Before you can record a lien statement, you must serve a written notice of intent to file on both the property owner (or reputed owner) and the prime contractor. Service must occur at least ten days before you file the lien with the county clerk and recorder. Personal delivery works, and so does certified or registered mail with return receipt requested.²

When you record the lien, you also have to file an affidavit proving the notice was mailed or served at least ten days earlier. Skipping the notice or filing the affidavit late is one of the most common reasons Colorado liens get thrown out. There is no grace period and no way to cure the defect after the fact.²

Filing the Lien Statement

The lien statement gets recorded with the county clerk and recorder in the county where the property sits. It has to be signed and sworn to by the claimant or someone acting on the claimant’s behalf, and it must include:

The name of the property owner or reputed owner, or a statement that the name is unknown.
The name of the person claiming the lien, the person who furnished the labor or materials, and the prime contractor if the claimant is a subcontractor.
A description of the property sufficient to identify it.
A statement of the amount due or owed.²

The filing deadline is four months from the last date you performed work or furnished materials on the project. Miss it, and the right to file is gone.²

What the Lien Amount Can Include

The amount you claim should reflect what you’re actually owed for labor, materials, or services provided to the project. Colorado permits interest to be included in the lien claim, but not attorney fees or other costs at the filing stage. If you win a foreclosure judgment, the court may award attorney fees and costs at that point. Padding the amount carries serious statutory consequences, addressed below.

Enforcing the Lien: The Six-Month Deadline

Recording the lien is only step one. To actually collect, you have to foreclose, and the deadline is easy to miscalculate.

You must file a foreclosure lawsuit and record a notice of lis pendens within six months after the last work was performed or materials were furnished, or after the project was completed. If you don’t do both within that window, the lien becomes void. The six-month clock runs from the last date of work or completion, not from the date you recorded the lien statement.³

Because you already have four months to record the lien, the gap between recording and the enforcement deadline can be as short as two months. Waiting until the last minute to file often leaves claimants scrambling to get a lawsuit on file before the six-month clock expires. Planning backward from the enforcement deadline is the smarter approach.

The lis pendens matters as much as the lawsuit. It’s a recorded notice, filed in the same county clerk and recorder’s office, telling the world that litigation affecting the property is pending. Filing the lawsuit without the lis pendens leaves the lien unenforceable.³

If the court rules in the claimant’s favor, it may order the property sold to satisfy the debt, along with interest, costs, and attorney fees.

Lien Priority

A Colorado mechanics lien relates back to the date work first began under the contract between the owner and the first contractor. If the contract was oral, the lien relates back to when physical work started on the property. A lien recorded months after construction began can still take priority over a mortgage or other encumbrance recorded during that same period, as long as the encumbrance came after work commenced.⁴

Relation back also reaches unrecorded encumbrances the claimant didn’t know about. If someone held an interest in the property but hadn’t recorded it, and the claimant had no actual notice of it, the mechanics lien takes priority.⁴

The major exception: a valid encumbrance recorded before the contract was signed or before work began keeps its seniority. In practice, this means a construction lender’s deed of trust recorded before the project starts will almost always outrank a mechanics lien, which is why lenders insist on recording before any shovel hits dirt.⁴

Subcontractors and suppliers are also protected from third-party creditors going after the general contractor’s funds. An attachment, garnishment, or execution levy on money owed by the owner to the contractor is not valid against a subcontractor’s or supplier’s lien.⁴

How Owners Can Respond

Owners have two main tools to blunt a lien without waiting for the foreclosure suit to resolve.

Substituting a Bond

Colorado allows an owner to swap a surety bond for the lien, shifting the claim from the real property to the bond. The bond must equal one and one-half times the lien amount plus any costs allowed to date, and it must be approved by a district court judge in the county where the property is located.⁵

Once the bond is filed and approved, the property is released and the claimant’s foreclosure right shifts to the bond. If the claimant wins, the bond’s principal and sureties pay the judgment, including any interest and costs the claimant would have recovered through foreclosure.⁵

Defense of Payment

Colorado gives owners an affirmative defense where the owner (or someone acting on the owner’s behalf) has already paid enough to satisfy the owner’s contractual and legal obligations. The defense doesn’t automatically defeat the lien, but it shifts the dispute toward the relationship between the general contractor and the unpaid party.⁶

Procedural Attacks

The strongest challenges usually target procedural failures: no ten-day notice, no affidavit of mailing, filing after the four-month deadline, an unverified lien statement, missing information, or failure to commence foreclosure and record a lis pendens within six months. Colorado’s lien law is unforgiving about these requirements.²³

Penalties for an Excessive Lien

Colorado punishes claimants who inflate their claims. If you file a lien for more than you’re actually owed, you knew the amount was inflated when you filed, and there was no reasonable possibility the full amount was due, you forfeit all rights to the lien. You also become liable to the property owner for all costs and attorney fees they incurred fighting the claim.⁷

The statute requires both knowledge and lack of reasonable basis, so an honest calculation error won’t trigger forfeiture. Deliberately padding a lien to gain leverage, or including amounts for work on a different project, will. Lien only for what you’re genuinely owed, document every dollar, and check the math before you file.

Retainage and Trust Fund Obligations

Colorado law requires a percentage of the total contract price to be withheld and not paid until at least thirty-five days after the project is fully completed. The retainage percentage decreases as the contract price rises: at least 15% on the first $250,000, at least 10% on the portion from $250,001 to $500,000, at least 5% on the portion from $500,001 to $750,000, and at least 2% on any excess above $750,000. A payment made before it is due under the contract does not defeat or reduce lien rights held by anyone other than the person who received the early payment, so an owner who pays the general contractor ahead of schedule cannot use that payment to wipe out a subcontractor’s lien.⁶

Every dollar disbursed to a contractor or subcontractor under a construction contract is treated as trust funds. That money must be used to pay the subcontractors, laborers, and material suppliers with lien rights or potential lien rights on the project. Diverting it to other projects, personal expenses, or unrelated debts is not just a civil problem; violating the trust fund obligation constitutes theft under Colorado criminal law.⁸

Contractors and subcontractors must keep separate accounting records for each project, though they are not required to open physically separate bank accounts as long as trust funds aren’t spent improperly. The obligation does not apply where the contractor has furnished a performance or payment bond, or where the property owner has provided a written release.⁸

Lien Waivers

Lien waivers are routine in Colorado construction payment. A conditional waiver takes effect only when the associated payment actually clears; an unconditional waiver takes effect the moment it is signed, regardless of whether payment ever arrives. Signing an unconditional waiver before the money is in your account means you’ve surrendered your lien rights with nothing to show for it.

Colorado has no statute prescribing mandatory waiver forms, so the language of each document controls. Vague or overly broad wording can waive rights beyond what either side intended. Read anything you’re asked to sign, and get legal advice if the language sweeps broadly.

Public and Federal Projects: Liens Don’t Apply

Mechanics liens do not attach to government-owned property. If you work on a public project in Colorado, your remedy is a claim against the contractor’s payment bond rather than a lien on the building.

For state and local government projects, unpaid subcontractors and suppliers can file a verified claim with the public body that awarded the contract, and it must be filed before final settlement. For contracts exceeding $150,000, the awarding body must publish notice of final settlement at least twice in a newspaper of general circulation (or an approved electronic medium) no later than ten days before final settlement occurs. Once a claim is filed, the public body must withhold enough money from payments to the general contractor to cover it. Withheld funds cannot be held longer than ninety days after the published final settlement date unless the claimant files a lawsuit and a lis pendens notice within that ninety-day period.⁹

Federal projects fall under the Miller Act. Prime contractors on federal construction contracts exceeding $100,000 must post a payment bond. First-tier subcontractors and suppliers can sue on the bond in U.S. District Court between 90 days and one year after their last labor or materials, with no preliminary notice required. Second-tier subcontractors must give written notice to the prime contractor within 90 days of their last work before they can bring suit.¹⁰

1
Justia. Colorado Code 38-22-101 – Liens in Favor of Whom – When Filed – Definition of Person
2
Justia. Colorado Code 38-22-109 – Lien Statement
3
Justia. Colorado Code 38-22-110 – Action Commenced Within Six Months
4
Justia. Colorado Code 38-22-106 – Priority of Lien – Attachments
5
Justia. Colorado Code 38-22-131 – Substitution of Bond Allowed
6
Justia. Colorado Code 38-22-102 – Payments
7
Justia. Colorado Code 38-22-128 – Excessive Amounts Claimed
8
Justia. Colorado Code 38-22-127 – Moneys for Lien Claims Made Trust Funds
9
Justia. Colorado Code 38-26-107 – Notice
10
U.S. General Services Administration. The Miller Act – Payment Protection for Subcontractors and Suppliers