Florida Notice of Intent to Lien: 45-Day Deadline and Service

In Florida, a notice of intent to lien is a voluntary warning letter a contractor, subcontractor, or supplier sends to a property owner before recording a construction lien. Nothing in Chapter 713 of the Florida Statutes requires it. What the statute does require, from parties who don’t have a direct contract with the owner, is a different document called the Notice to Owner. The two get confused constantly, and the confusion is expensive: skipping or mistiming the Notice to Owner is a complete defense against your lien.¹

A voluntary notice of intent can still be useful. Owners sometimes have no idea a subcontractor or supplier further down the chain hasn’t been paid, and a letter warning that a lien is coming often shakes loose a check. But sending that letter does not satisfy any statutory requirement, and receiving one does not start any clock running on the owner. If you want to preserve lien rights, the document that matters is the Notice to Owner. If you’re an owner who just received a threatening letter, the real question is whether the sender did the statutory steps correctly.

Who Has to Send a Notice to Owner

The Notice to Owner requirement applies to anyone furnishing labor, services, or materials who does not have a direct contract with the property owner. That means subcontractors, sub-subcontractors, and material suppliers. The purpose is straightforward: the owner has no contractual relationship with these parties and may not even know they’re on the job, so the statute forces them to identify themselves.¹

A general contractor with a direct contract with the owner does not need to serve a Notice to Owner. Section 713.05 governs lien rights for contractors in privity with the owner, and it doesn’t impose the notice step.² Laborers are also exempt, though they still have to record a claim of lien to perfect their rights.

If you’re further down the chain, you have extra recipients. A sub-subcontractor or a supplier to a subcontractor must serve the notice on both the owner and the general contractor. A supplier to a sub-subcontractor must serve it on the contractor and, if the name and address are known, the subcontractor as well.¹

The 45-Day Deadline

Serve the Notice to Owner before you start furnishing labor, services, or materials, or no later than 45 days after you start. The clock begins on your first day of work or first delivery, not your last. This is the deadline people get wrong most often. A subcontractor who thinks about the notice when payment problems appear months into the job has almost certainly already lost the ability to lien.¹

There is a secondary cutoff: the notice must also be served before the owner disburses final payment following the contractor’s final payment affidavit. Do not treat that as a safety net. Once the affidavit lands, final payment can move quickly, and by then the contract funds may already be gone. Serving within the first few days on the job is the safe practice.

The consequence of missing the deadline is not softened by circumstance. The statute calls late or missing notice a complete defense to the lien. No balancing test, no judicial discretion. Late means no lien.¹

What the Notice Must Include

The Notice to Owner must state your name and address, describe the property well enough to identify it, and describe the labor, services, or materials you are furnishing or plan to furnish. Section 713.06 provides a statutory form that the notice should substantially follow.¹

The notice must also carry the statutory warning to the owner, printed in capital letters, telling the owner that unpaid subcontractors and suppliers can lien the property even if the owner has already paid the general contractor in full. That warning is what prompts owners to verify downstream payments before releasing funds.

The statute says “in substantially the following form,” so exact word-for-word matching isn’t required. Still, deviating far from the model form invites arguments that the notice is deficient. Sticking close to the statutory template is the safer choice.

How to Serve the Notice

Section 713.18 sets the delivery methods. Three qualify:

Personal delivery to the owner, to a partner if the owner is a partnership, or to an officer, director, or managing agent if the owner is a corporation or LLC.
Certified mail, registered mail, Global Express Guaranteed, or a common carrier service, with postage or shipping prepaid and evidence of delivery.
Posting at the job site, but only after personal delivery and mail delivery have both failed.

Keep proof. Certified mail receipts, carrier tracking, and signed acknowledgments are what carry the day if the owner later claims the notice never arrived. Without documentation, service disputes can undo lien rights.

Check the Notice of Commencement First

Before you send anything, pull the Notice of Commencement from the county clerk’s records. The owner is required to record this document before construction begins, and it lists the legal description of the property, the owner’s and contractor’s names and addresses, and contact information for the construction lender if there is one. If the Notice of Commencement designates a specific person or address for receiving notices, that’s where your Notice to Owner has to go.³¹

A Notice of Commencement expires one year after recording unless the construction contract specifies a longer term, and it becomes void if the described work isn’t actually started within 90 days of recording.³ For a subcontractor or supplier, this document is the source of the information you need to serve your notice correctly.

What Happens After the Notice

Serving the Notice to Owner preserves your right to lien. It doesn’t create one. To actually place a lien on the property, you record a sworn claim of lien with the clerk of the circuit court in the county where the property sits, within 90 days after your last day of furnishing labor, services, or materials.⁴

The claim of lien must be signed under oath and must state your name and address, who hired you, a description of the labor, services, or materials and their contract price or value, a legal description of the property, the owner’s name, the dates you first and last furnished work, the unpaid balance including any contractual finance charges, and, if you’re not in privity with the owner, the date and method you used to serve the Notice to Owner.⁴

A copy of the recorded claim must be served on the owner before recording or within 15 days after. Miss that window and the lien becomes voidable if the owner can show prejudice from the delay.⁴

Once recorded, the lien lasts one year from the date of recording. To enforce it, you file a foreclosure-style lawsuit within that year. If the year runs out with no suit filed, the lien expires on its own.⁵

One additional constraint on the payment chain matters here. Before a general contractor can demand final payment, the contractor has to deliver a final payment affidavit identifying every lienor who served a Notice to Owner and stating whether each has been paid. A contractor who doesn’t deliver it can’t enforce a lien, and an owner who releases final payment without receiving it remains exposed to valid downstream liens the owner knew about.¹

If You’re the Owner Receiving One of These

An owner who receives a notice of intent to lien or, later, a recorded claim of lien has several statutory tools.

Notice of Contest of Lien

Record a Notice of Contest of Lien with the clerk and the lien claimant’s one-year enforcement window collapses to 60 days. If the claimant doesn’t file suit within that period, the lien is automatically extinguished with no court order needed.⁵ It’s an aggressive move, and it tends to shake out weak or inflated claims because many claimants won’t spend the money to sue on that timeline.

Transfer to a Bond

To clear the lien from the property title, perhaps to close a sale or refinance, you can transfer the lien to a surety bond. The bond takes the property’s place as security, and the lien comes off the title while the claimant’s rights shift to the bond. The bond must equal the amount claimed, plus three years of interest at the legal rate, plus either $5,000 or 25 percent of the lien amount, whichever is greater, for potential attorney’s fees and costs. Cash deposited with the clerk works as an alternative to a surety bond.⁶

Demand a Sworn Statement of Account

You can require the claimant to produce a sworn, itemized accounting of what’s owed, what’s been paid, and the nature of the work or materials supplied. The claimant has 30 days to respond. Refusing to respond, or submitting a false statement, can strip the claimant of lien rights entirely.⁷ The tool is especially useful when the amount looks inflated, because the response is under oath.

Fraudulent Lien Claims

A lien is fraudulent under Florida law if the claimant willfully exaggerated the amount, included charges for work not performed, or compiled the claim with gross negligence amounting to willful exaggeration. Genuine disputes about the balance and honest arithmetic errors are not fraud; the exaggeration has to be intentional. A fraudulent lien is unenforceable and forfeits the claimant’s lien rights on the property. The owner or any injured party can also sue for damages, including attorney’s fees, court costs, the premium paid on any transfer bond, and punitive damages equal to the difference between the amount claimed and the amount actually owed. Filing a willfully fraudulent lien is a third-degree felony in Florida.

1
Florida Legislature. Florida Statutes Section 713.06 – Liens of Persons Not in Privity; Proper Payments
2
Florida Legislature. Florida Statutes Section 713.05 – Right to Lien; Persons in Privity
3
Florida Senate. Florida Statutes 713.13 – Notice of Commencement
4
Florida Legislature. Florida Statutes Section 713.08 – Claim of Lien
5
Florida Senate. Florida Statutes 713.22 – Duration of Lien
6
Florida Senate. Florida Statutes 713.24 – Transfer of Liens to Security
7
Florida Senate. Florida Statutes 713.16 – Demand for Copy of Contract and Statements of Account