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There may have been few instances where you are not paid for the work done on a project. You have been given some or the other reasons by the construction company that you found to be absolutely vague and got the hint that you will not be paid for your work. Situations like these are nothing but a nightmare for small contractors. Firstly, the small contractors do not have sufficient money to pay the workers and if at all they manage to secure the money from any of their sources, they experience a hard time to meet the other operational expenses of their business. On top of that if they see the construction company to be defaulting on them, they can’t imagine anything worse than that. In such a situation, the only thing that they can do is place a lien on the property that will disallow the company to get any loans or any sort of finance on the property.

You can’t place a lien on any property just because you want to. For that, you have to approach the court and put forth your matter to them. Take help of a competent attorney who will guide you with the legal proceedings and also will fight the case for you. Once the court acknowledges and sees that you owe money on the property that will allow you to place a lien on the place. Now once you get the lien, you also get the legal right to sell the property and claim the due amount.

Now the kind of evidences that you can submit to the court is the invoices of the materials that were bought for the construction of the building in the property. Additionally, you can also show the bills that were incurred for the wages you paid to the workers. These evidences will certainly make your case strong and you can hope that the court will rule in your favor. However, there is a timeframe for placing liens. You need to place the lien within a stipulated period of time or else the court will not entertain your plea.

Once you get the ruling in your favor, you have to inform your debtors about it and send a copy of the notice to them. This will give a strong message to your debtors that you are just not letting them go and placing a lien can bring trouble to them. They might then intend to pay you in full and once you are paid in full, you should drop the lien by informing the court that you have received the money in full.

Though placing a lien can work as a tool in recovering your dues, this should not be misused by you in any manner. In case, you approach to the court stating that you have not received the money whereas you have been already paid, it can backfire hard on you. The court may direct the authorities to put you behind the bars. Hence any such intention should be strictly avoided.

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