Florida runs a statutory waiver regime under Fla. Stat. § 713.20 with prescribed forms for waiver upon progress payment in subsection (4) and waiver upon final payment in subsection (5). The wrinkle that catches most builders is subsection (7), which requires unconditional waivers to recite the exact dollar amount of payment received and the date the funds cleared. Couple that with the Notice to Owner regime under § 713.06 and the Notice of Commencement under § 713.13, and a Florida residential project has more upstream paperwork than almost any other state.
The statute
Florida’s Construction Lien Law lives in Chapter 713 of the Florida Statutes. The waiver mechanics are in § 713.20, which prescribes the statutory forms and sets the rules for when a waiver is valid. The chapter has been amended repeatedly since its rewrite in 1990 and the current waiver forms reflect the 2007 revisions that introduced the strict payment-recitation requirement.
Section 713.20(2) makes any pre-payment waiver unenforceable except in the form prescribed by subsections (4) and (5). The state will not treat a generic AIA G-series waiver, an out-of-state form, or a contract clause purporting to waive liens in advance as a valid release. The forms are mandatory and the language is not optional.
The four statutory waiver forms
Florida technically prescribes two forms in the statute, one for progress payment in § 713.20(4) and one for final payment in § 713.20(5). Each comes in a conditional and an unconditional variant based on whether the lienor has actually received the payment. The four working variants line up with the standard model.
| Form | When used | Required recitations | Effective date |
|---|---|---|---|
| Conditional waiver and release upon progress payment | Submitted with each interim draw before payment | Project property, owner, lienor, payer, payment amount, period covered, exceptions | When payment has actually been received and cleared |
| Unconditional waiver and release upon progress payment | Signed after the interim payment has cleared | Same fields plus the exact payment amount received and the date funds cleared | On signature |
| Conditional waiver and release upon final payment | Submitted with the final draw before payment | Project property, owner, lienor, payer, final amount, exceptions | When the final payment has cleared |
| Unconditional waiver and release upon final payment | Signed after final payment has cleared | Same fields plus the exact final payment amount and the date funds cleared | On signature |
The conditional forms operate as a statement that the waiver becomes effective only when the check or wire actually clears. They are safe to deliver alongside the invoice because the lienor retains the right to file a lien if payment fails. The unconditional forms are the dangerous ones; once signed, the lien rights for the period covered are gone whether or not the payment actually arrived.
The payment recitation requirement
Section 713.20(7) is the rule that distinguishes Florida from most statutory states. An unconditional waiver and release upon progress or final payment is not valid unless it recites the exact dollar amount of payment received and the date the funds cleared. A waiver that says “in consideration of payment received for work through April 30” without naming the dollar figure is challengeable. A waiver that names the figure but uses the date of the check rather than the date the funds cleared the bank is similarly vulnerable.
In practice this means the unconditional waiver cannot be prepared until the wire has settled. Builders who try to pre-stage unconditional waivers with the invoice, expecting the vendor to sign once payment lands, end up with documents that fail the recitation test. The clean approach is to wait for the wire, confirm settlement with the bank, and then issue the waiver with the exact amount and the exact clearing date populated.
The recitation requirement also rules out most out-of-state waiver templates. AIA G-series waivers do not have a date-funds-cleared field and reciting that information by hand in the margin is not a substitute for using the statutory form. Builders moving from a non-statutory state to Florida have to swap their template library before the first Florida invoice goes out.
Notice to Owner under § 713.06
Anyone not in privity with the owner has to serve a Notice to Owner under § 713.06 to preserve lien rights. That includes most subs and material suppliers, since their contract is with the GC rather than with the owner. The notice has to be served within 45 days of the first day labor or materials are furnished. Service has to be on the owner, the contractor, and any lender identified in the Notice of Commencement.
Missing the 45-day window is a hard forfeiture. There is no good-faith exception, no cure period, and no reciprocity for similar notices served in other states. For a sub starting on day one of a project, the calendar runs from that first day regardless of whether the sub was on site continuously or pulled off the job for two weeks before returning. The trigger is first furnishing, not last furnishing.
The Notice to Owner must identify the lienor, the property, the owner, the contractor, a description of the labor or materials being furnished, and the name of the person with whom the lienor contracted. Florida courts have rejected notices that omit any required field, and a defective notice is treated as no notice at all. The form lives in § 713.06(2)(c) and using it verbatim is the safest path.
Notice of Commencement under § 713.13
The owner’s side of the upstream paperwork is the Notice of Commencement. Section 713.13 requires the owner to record a Notice of Commencement before construction begins on any project where the direct contract exceeds $2,500. The notice has to be recorded in the official records of the county where the property sits and posted on the job site. It identifies the property, the owner, the contractor, the surety, the lender, and the persons authorized to receive notices on the owner’s behalf.
For the builder, the Notice of Commencement is the document that subs and suppliers reference when serving their Notice to Owner. If the owner records the Notice of Commencement late or omits the lender from the notice, downstream notices fail and lien rights through the chain become vulnerable. A clean Florida residential project starts with the owner recording the Notice of Commencement and the GC receiving a stamped copy that gets distributed to every sub on day one.
The Notice of Commencement is also the document that protects the owner from having to pay twice. Section 713.06(3) provides that an owner making a payment in compliance with a properly recorded Notice of Commencement, and after receiving the contractor’s sworn statement of subs and suppliers, gets statutory protection against later unpaid lien claims. The mechanism only works if the upstream paperwork is in place.
Filing deadlines
Section 713.08 sets the deadline to record a Claim of Lien at 90 days after the lienor’s last furnishing of labor, services, or materials to the project. The 90-day window is calendar-day strict and the trigger is the lienor’s own last furnishing, not the project’s overall last furnishing.
After the Claim of Lien is recorded, § 713.22 gives the lienor one year from the recording date to file an action to foreclose the lien, unless the owner serves a Notice of Contest of Lien under § 713.22(2), which compresses the window to 60 days. Owners who want to clear a stale lien off the title use the contest mechanism aggressively, so a recorded lien is not a passive document; it sets a clock that the lienor has to act on.
Common pitfalls
Three issues account for most of the Florida lien rights lost on residential projects. First is the missed Notice to Owner: a sub starts work and the 45-day clock runs out before anyone in the office realizes Florida requires the notice from anyone not in privity with the owner. Second is the AIA waiver substitution: a vendor delivers an AIA G-702 with a G-706 waiver, the waiver lacks the exact payment amount and date-funds-cleared recitations, and a later dispute exposes the gap. Third is the pre-payment unconditional waiver: a builder presses a vendor to sign an unconditional waiver before the wire clears, and the vendor either signs and loses lien rights against an unfunded payment or refuses and stalls the next draw.
The fix is the same as in any statutory state. Keep a Florida-specific waiver template library that includes the recitation fields, build the Notice to Owner deadline into the project setup checklist alongside permit issuance, and never let an unconditional waiver leave the office before the bank confirms the wire has cleared.
A clean Florida draw cycle
Before construction starts, the owner records the Notice of Commencement under § 713.13 and posts a copy on the job site. The GC distributes a stamped copy to every sub at mobilization. Within 45 days of first furnishing, every sub and material supplier not in privity with the owner serves a Notice to Owner on the owner, the GC, and the lender named in the Notice of Commencement.
On each draw, the sub delivers an invoice with a conditional waiver upon progress payment in the § 713.20(4) form, listing the property, the owner, the lienor, the payer, the period covered, and any exceptions for retainage or disputed work. The GC compiles the draw package, the lender funds, the wire settles. Within 48 hours of clearing, the sub signs an unconditional waiver upon progress payment that recites the exact dollar amount received and the date the funds cleared, in the § 713.20(4) unconditional form. The unconditional waivers from the prior draw ship with the next draw package as proof that prior periods are clean. At project close the sequence runs once more with the conditional and unconditional waivers upon final payment under § 713.20(5). Run on schedule, this is the Florida regime working as designed. Run late, the result is a Claim of Lien at 90 days and a foreclosure action twelve months after that.