Arizona 20-Day Preliminary Notice Mistakes

Imagine this: a sub-contractor finishes weeks of professional work on an Arizona building project, issues invoices, and gets nothing but crickets. A construction lien is going to seem like the clear-cut next move — before an attorney breaks the word that the right for filing one was lost from the beginning, prior to the first construction equipment ever being offloaded. There is not a lien. By no means of leveraging. No recovery down that road. The work was actual, the liability is actual, and the loss of remedy is totally actual too. What happened? A sole procedural step assumed or disregarded completely: a preliminary lien notice.

Arizona’s 20-Day Preliminary Notice

As required by Arizona’s 20-day preliminary notice law, just about every contractor, sub-contractor, design professional and supplier, that works on a privatized building project in Arizona is required to deliver this written notice on the owner of the property, the construction manager, and any development lender inside of the twenty days of initially supplying materials and/ or labor. It is mandatory, has actual consequences, and courts are not going to bend the rule for compassionate facts. Disregard it, and lien rights can be extinguished forever, without regard to how genuine, recorded, or delinquent the basic payment claim might be.

The notice is not a lien. It is not going to impede the property or impact title. Its only intention is to warn up-stream parties that the complainant is on the project and might seek a lien if payment has not been received. In return for that initial clarity, Arizona law awards the complainant the right for filing a construction lien if required. Lacking the notice, that right is simply nonexistent.

The Most Destructive Preliminary Notice Errors

1) Serving the notice long overdue, or not at all.

2) Missing the required recipients.

3) Using e-mail or casual delivery.

4) Using a not in accordance notice form.

5) Declining to update when contract value increases.

6) Declining to retain evidence of service.

7) Mixing up privatized and public project requirements.

The Consequences Are Serious and Typically Irreversible

An imperfect or missing preliminary notice is not going to make a lien more difficult to implement. In a lot of cases, it removes the right to implement one completely. Courts in Arizona have continuously upheld that a preliminary notice is a required legal requirement, not an escape clause subject to unprejudiced alleviation. Discovering this issue following a payment challenge has closed, when a construction lien would be the quickest and most powerful redress available, is precisely when the damage is most expensive.