The Texas Notice of Claim: One Notice, Two Recipients, and the Rule That Was Repealed

Texas has no preliminary notice. Property Code 53.056 requires a monthly notice of claim to the owner AND the original contractor by the 15th of the third month — second on residential — and the two-notice scheme most articles still describe was struck out in 2022.

Start by unlearning the second-month notice

If you have read that Texas needs two notices — one to your original contractor in the second month, then one to the owner in the third — that was the law, and it is not any more. House Bill 2237 repealed Property Code section 53.056(b) through (f) with effect from 1 January 2022.

What replaced it is one notice of claim, sent to the owner and the original contractor together. A great deal of what is written about Texas lien notices still describes the repealed version, which is worth knowing before you reconcile this guide against an article that disagrees with it.

Texas has no preliminary notice at all, in the sense California and Arizona use the phrase. Nothing goes out at the start of the job. The clock only starts when work goes unpaid.

Who sends it, and to whom

Section 53.056(a) puts the requirement on a claimant other than an original contractor — a subcontractor, a sub-subcontractor, a supplier. If you contracted directly with the owner you are the original contractor and this section is not about you.

Subsection (a-1) names both recipients: the owner or reputed owner, and the original contractor. Both, on the same notice, by the same deadline. Sending to one is not most of the job; it is a notice that has not been given.

The deadline is a month, not a date

Section 53.056(a-1)(1): for projects other than residential construction projects, not later than the 15th day of the third month after the month during which the labor or materials were provided. Paragraph (2) makes it the second month for residential.

Read that carefully, because it is the part people translate into days and get wrong. The clock does not run from the day you worked. It runs from the MONTH you worked. Labor provided on 1 March and labor provided on 31 March share a deadline — the 15th of June on a commercial job — and no number of days can express that.

It is also per month. Each month of unpaid work has its own notice and its own deadline, so a claimant who has gone unpaid since March is sending one in June, another in July, another in August. That habit is the whole discipline of Texas lien practice.

Specially fabricated materials that were never delivered count from the month they would normally have been delivered.

Retainage is a different notice on a different clock

Section 53.057 is a second document and catches people who did everything right on the first one. To the extent a claim for unpaid retainage is not wholly covered by a 53.056 notice, a claimant whose contract provides for retainage must give this one, or the lien for that retainage is not valid.

Its deadline has nothing to do with months of work. Subsection (a-1): not later than the EARLIER of the 30th day after your own contract is completed, terminated or abandoned, or the 30th day after the original contract is terminated or abandoned.

"Earlier of" is doing real work there. If the general contract blows up before your scope finishes, your retainage clock started on that date and not on yours.

What the notice must say

Both sections prescribe a form, and both forms are short. 53.056(a-2) and 53.057(a-2) give a warning line, a sentence to the owner about withholding funds, and eight fields: date, project description or address, claimant's name, type of labor or materials, original contractor's name, the party you contracted with if different, the amount, and the claimant's contact person and address. The retainage version replaces the claim amount with total retainage unpaid.

The statute says the notice must be in substantially that form, and both sections allow you to attach an invoice or billing statement. Attaching one is often the cheapest way to make the type-of-labor line unarguable.

Section 53.056(a-4) allows a separate written notice of a past-due invoice to the original contractor. That one is optional — it is not required for a lien to be valid — and it should not be confused with the notice this guide is about.

How to send it

• In person to the party entitled to the notice or to that party's agent (53.003(b)(1)).
• By certified mail (53.003(b)(2)).
• By any other form of traceable, private delivery or mailing service that can confirm proof of receipt (53.003(b)(3)).

Certified mail is the one worth defaulting to, because 53.003(c) says deposit in the United States mail in the form required is compliance — the deadline is about sending, not arriving. And 53.003(d) closes the argument from the other end: if the person entitled to the notice actually received it, the method stops mattering. Keep the receipt regardless. Section 53.054(a)(8) will make you state, in the lien affidavit later, the date each notice was sent and how it was sent.

Weekends and holidays

Section 53.003(e): if a deadline falls on a Saturday, Sunday or legal holiday, the period extends to the next day that is not one.

Useful, and not something to lean on. The extension is real, but Texas legal holidays are a moving list, and a deadline you have calculated to the last possible day is a deadline with no room in it for a courier that misses a pickup. Treat the roll as insurance against a bad calendar, not as an extra day you have earned.

The notice is not the lien

The notice preserves the right. The affidavit creates the lien, and it has its own deadline in section 53.052: for a claimant other than an original contractor, the 15th day of the fourth month after the month you last provided labor or materials — the third month on a residential project. A lien for retainage alone runs from the month the original contract was completed, terminated or abandoned.

Section 53.054 lists what the affidavit must contain, and two items catch people out: a statement of each month the work was done for which payment is requested, and the date and manner of each notice you sent. Both are reconstructed from the notices, which is another reason to keep them filed rather than sent and forgotten.

Then section 53.055 gives you five days from filing to send a copy of the filed affidavit to the owner, and — if you are not the original contractor — to the original contractor as well.

The habits that keep the right

• Diary by month, not by day. The deadline belongs to the month the work was in.
• Send one every month you are unpaid, and do not let a promise of payment next week eat a deadline.
• Send to both the owner and the original contractor, on the same notice, every time.
• Use certified mail and file the receipt with the job, because the affidavit will ask you for the date and the manner months later.
• Watch the retainage clock separately. It starts when a contract ends, not when a month ends, and it can start on somebody else's contract ending.

This is general information about Texas law, not legal advice, and the law changes. Deadlines here are as the Property Code states them; how they apply to a particular job depends on facts a lawyer would need. Confirm with a Texas construction attorney before relying on any of it.