Learn More>>Georgia Lien Law >>Deadlines

There are three very important time deadlines for filing a Georgia construction lien. The first is that a construction lien must be filed within three months from the last date that services and/or materials were provided to the subject property. For example, if an electrical contractor last provided services for a developer building a strip mall on January 15, 2007, he would have had until April 15, 2007 to file a lien on the subject property for work that had not been paid for by the owner/contractor. Note, Georgia lien law does not say ninety days, Georgia lien law says three months. So whatever day it is in the middle of the month, add three months to that date and that's your deadline for filing a lien in Georgia.

Now, sound advice says contact a construction lawyer early on in the process to prevent stress and missed deadlines. If you wait until the last couple of days, you might not have all of the information needed to file the lien, miscalculate days, notice becomes more difficult to perfect upon the owner/general contractor in a timely manner. Waiting until day 87 to decide to file a lien is a generally unsound strategy and can have serious negative legal impacts on your ability to successfully prosecute and foreclose on a lien in Georgia.

The second very important deadline is one that relates to the foreclosing of the lien. Often times, a lien is filed in Georgia and the owner/general contractor acknowledges the lien and satisfies the lien accordingly. However, it is also often the case in Georgia that construction liens are filed and the owner/general contractor decides to wait the lien out for a year and see what the contractor will do. Georgia lien law requires that a lawsuit be brought within one year from the date that the debt first became due--repeat--from the date that the debt first became due--not the date of the lien filing.

Georgia lien law uses the date that the contractor was last on the job as a baseline for deadlines as it relates to the filing of the lien but then uses the date that the debt originally came due as a baseline for the prosecution of the same lien. Confusing and tricky. Do not wait until what you perceive as the last minute to file a lawsuit to foreclose on a Georgia lien against the owner who has not paid you only to find out that the lawsuit had to be filed a month before you even thought about calling a construction lawyer to foreclose on your lien.

The third deadline is a Notice of Lawsuit that is filed in the Superior Court in the County where the lien is being foreclosed. When a lawsuit is filed to foreclose on a Georgia construction lien, a notice must be filed within two weeks of when the lawsuit is filed so that others may be aware that litigation is ongoing on the lien that was filed.