The GC Won't Pay You: A Florida Subcontractor's Escalation Playbook

Florida’s payment system has an awkward shape for anyone learning it during a dispute: the step that gives you the most leverage came due 45 days after you first furnished anything to the job, back when everyone was friendly and nobody was thinking about collections.

So the first question in any Florida escalation is not “what do I do next.” It is “what did I already do.” Everything above rung two depends on the answer.

What a Florida subcontractor can do when the GC will not pay

First fork: what kind of job is this?

Getting this wrong wastes the only windows you have, so it comes before the ladder rather than after it.

Two more facts that can end the analysis before it starts. If you were unlicensed for work that required a licence, no lien and no bond claim exists in your favour and the contract is unenforceable by you — the unlicensed-contractor post covers what that leaves. And if the 45-day Notice to Owner window closed without service on a non-privity job, rung three does not work as written and rung four is generally unavailable; the missed-notice triage is the post to read instead.

Rung 1 — The documented demand

Call whoever releases money, then write it down. Invoice number, project, amount, days past due, and a date by which you expect payment. No adjectives.

Three Florida-specific things belong in that first week while everyone is still calm.

Ask whether the project is bonded, and pull the Notice of Commencement to check. Where a payment bond exists, a copy has to be attached when the notice of commencement is recorded, so the answer is usually in the official records rather than in somebody’s memory.

Pin down your own final furnishing date in your records. Delivery tickets, daily logs, pay applications. What controls the 90-day recording deadline is the date you actually last furnished, and the statute is emphatic that the period is measured from the last day of furnishing and “may not be measured by other standards, such as the issuance of a certificate of occupancy or the issuance of a certificate of substantial completion.” A “confirmation” of the wrong date in an email can be used against you as easily as for you.

Send the written demand the statute backs. A copy of the contract of a lienor or owner, and a statement of the amount due or to become due where it is fixed or ascertainable, must be furnished by any party to it on written demand of an owner or a lienor contracting with or employed by the other party. A person who suffers detriment from a refusal, a failure to furnish, or a wilfully and falsely stated amount has a cause of action for damages — and information furnished is binding on whoever furnished it unless actual notice of a modification arrives before the recipient acts on it in good faith [Fla. Stat. § 713.16(1)]. That is a cheap way to get the contract balance on the record from the party who knows it.

[YOUR COMPANY LETTERHEAD]

October 6, 2026

VIA CERTIFIED MAIL, RETURN RECEIPT REQUESTED
AND BY EMAIL

Coastline Builders, Inc.
Attn: Accounts Payable
[address]

RE:  PAST DUE — REQUEST FOR PAYMENT AND STATEMENT OF ACCOUNT
   Project:  Palma Ridge Medical Offices
             [street address], [county] County, Florida
   Invoices: 4471, 4506
   Past due: $38,400.00

To whom it may concern:

Coastal Mechanical LLC furnished labor, services and materials to the
above project under its subcontract with Coastline Builders, Inc. dated
[date]. The following amounts remain unpaid:

   Invoice 4471    April 2026 work    $22,100.00    due May 31, 2026
   Invoice 4506    May 2026 work      $16,300.00    due June 30, 2026
                                      ----------
   Total past due                     $38,400.00

We have received no written notice of any defect in the work and no
written statement identifying any part of this balance as disputed.

Pursuant to Section 713.16(1), Florida Statutes, we request a copy of
the contract between you and the owner for this project and a written
statement of the amount due or to become due under it, to the extent
that amount is fixed or ascertainable.

We also request, in writing:

1. Confirmation of whether a payment bond has been furnished for this
   project, and if so a copy of it.
2. The dates on which you have received payment from the owner for the
   work covered by the invoices above.

Please pay $38,400.00, or provide the statement and information
requested above, on or before October 20, 2026.

We would prefer to resolve this commercially. Our Notice to Owner for
this project was served on [date]; proof of service is on file.

Sincerely,

_________________________________
[Name], [Title]
Coastal Mechanical LLC
[phone] · [email]

Enclosures: invoices 4471 and 4506

Rung 2 — The Notice to Owner, if the window is open

The Notice to Owner is not an escalation in Florida. It is job-opening paperwork that happens to be the most valuable thing you will ever mail.

A lienor without a direct contract with the owner must serve it before commencing, or not later than 45 days after commencing, to furnish labour, services or materials — and in any event before the owner disburses the final payment after the contractor has furnished the final payment affidavit [§ 713.06(2)(a)]. Note what it turns on: your own first furnishing, not the project’s start, so a late-mobilising subcontractor can still be inside the window while an early material delivery is already outside it.

Three details that decide real cases:

• A sub-subcontractor or a materialman to a subcontractor must also serve a copy on the contractor as a prerequisite to perfecting a lien, and a materialman to a sub-subcontractor serves the contractor and, where it knows the name and address, the subcontractor.
• Where the owner designated an additional person in the notice of commencement to receive a copy of a lienor’s notice, serve them too — although failing to serve that copy does not invalidate an otherwise valid lien.
• Mailing by day 40 is effective on mailing, where the notice went by registered, Global Express Guaranteed, or certified mail to the statutory address and you keep a mail log or USPS tracking records [§ 713.18(2)]. The mail log is not administrative tidiness; it is what makes the service date provable.

Three possibilities, and each changes the rest of the ladder:

• The window is open. Serving today is the highest-value hour in this whole process. The deadline calculator in the Florida guide will confirm your date in ten seconds.
• It was served weeks ago. Good. Put the proof of service in the same folder as the invoices, because rungs three, four and five all reference it.
• The window closed and nothing was served. Lien rights on this project are almost certainly gone, and the honest map of what survives a missed Notice to Owner is the post to read instead of this one. Rung one still works. Rung three does not work as described below, and for a harder reason than most people realise: the statute bars the owner from paying a lienor whose notice time has expired.

Rung 3 — Escalation to the owner: proper payments, explained properly

This is where Florida diverges from most states, and where nearly every article gets it wrong in one direction or the other. It is not a fund trap. It is also not nothing.

Florida’s proper payments scheme is written as a road map for the owner, and the framing sentence matters more than anything inside it. The subsection opens: “The owner may make proper payments on the direct contract as to lienors under this section, in the following manner” [§ 713.06(3)]. So what follows is the method by which an owner earns the proper-payment defence, not a freestanding duty to hand you money on demand. Read the bullets below in that light:

• When any payment other than the final payment becomes due to the contractor, the owner shall pay or cause to be paid the sum then due to each lienor giving notice prior to the time of that payment, within the limits the section sets.
• Where the payment due is insufficient to pay all bills of lienors giving notice, the owner shall prorate the amount then due among them, and lienors receiving money execute partial releases to the extent received.
• The owner is under no obligation to any lienor, except laborers, from whom no notice to owner was received at the time of making a payment.
• Where the owner has properly retained everything the statute requires but has otherwise made improper payments, the owner’s property is liable to complying lienors “only to the extent of the retentions and the improper payments” — and any payment proved to have caused no detriment to a particular lienor is held properly paid as to that lienor.
• Before paying money directly to any lienor other than the contractor or a laborer, the owner must give the contractor at least 10 days’ written notice of the intention and the amounts.

So the accurate framing is this: your served notice does not freeze a draw, and it does not create a duty to hand you a cheque on demand. What it does is put you inside the set of lienors the owner has to account for if the owner wants the protection the section offers. In practice that protection is earned through the machinery the section describes — payments supported by the contractor’s affidavit and the releases the subsection contemplates, plus the required retentions. An owner who disburses outside that machinery has made improper payments, and the property answers to complying lienors to the extent of the retentions plus those improper payments. Whether any given payment was proper is a fact question about statutory compliance rather than about whether the owner read your letter. Owners and their lenders understand the exposure, which is why the letter below works.

The final-payment machinery is worth knowing too, because it is where a lot of subcontractors are quietly cut out. The contractor must give the owner a final payment affidavit naming any lienors who have not been paid in full, and has no lien or right of action against the owner while in default for not giving it. The owner must retain the final payment until that affidavit is furnished, and where final payment has become due and the owner fails to withhold as required, “the property improved shall be subject to the full amount of all valid liens of which the owner has notice at the time the contractor furnishes his or her affidavit.”

The letter that does that work

One paragraph, no adjectives, and no legal conclusions you would have to defend.

[YOUR COMPANY LETTERHEAD]

October 6, 2026

VIA CERTIFIED MAIL, RETURN RECEIPT REQUESTED
AND BY EMAIL

Palma Ridge Properties Holdings, LLC
c/o [designated person named in the Notice of Commencement]
[address exactly as shown in the Notice of Commencement]

cc:  Coastline Builders, Inc. (contractor)
   [address]

RE:  UNPAID AMOUNT — NOTICED LIENOR
   Project:   Palma Ridge Medical Offices
              [street address and legal description as recorded]
   Folio:     [tax folio number]
   NOC:       recorded [date], Book [xx], Page [xx]
   NTO:       served on you [date] by certified mail
              [tracking number]

To the Owner:

Coastal Mechanical LLC served its Notice to Owner on this project on
March 14, 2026. A copy, with proof of service, is enclosed.

$38,400.00 remains unpaid for labor, services and materials furnished
through May 2026:

   Invoice 4471    April 2026    $22,100.00
   Invoice 4506    May 2026      $16,300.00
                                 ----------
   Total unpaid                  $38,400.00

We are writing so that our claim is on your record in connection with
any further disbursement under the direct contract for this project. We
are a lienor who gave notice, and we ask only that our claim be
accounted for in the manner Section 713.06(3), Florida Statutes,
provides for payments on the direct contract.

We would prefer to resolve this without recording a Claim of Lien. We
remain willing to execute a partial release to the extent of any payment
received, and to provide a sworn statement of account on request.

Please direct any questions to the undersigned.

Sincerely,

_________________________________
[Name], [Title]
Coastal Mechanical LLC
[phone] · [email]

Enclosures: Notice to Owner with proof of service; invoices 4471, 4506

That letter changes who is asking your customer for an explanation. Most owners forward it to the general contractor the same day, and most general contractors respond faster to their customer than to their subcontractor.

One thing to be careful about: do not tell the owner they are obliged to pay you directly. They may not be, and the statute has its own procedure — including 10 days’ notice to the contractor — before an owner pays a lienor direct. Overstating it turns a credible letter into one the owner’s lawyer answers instead of acting on.

Rung 4 — The Claim of Lien

Record within 90 days of your final furnishing, in the official records of the county where the property sits. Where the original contract is terminated under § 713.07(4), a claim for a lien attaching before that termination may not be recorded after 90 days following the termination or 90 days after your final furnishing, whichever occurs first — and where the property is situated in two or more counties, the claim is recorded in the clerk’s office in each of them [§ 713.08(5)].

Three requirements to respect:

It is sworn. The claim must be signed and sworn to or affirmed by the lienor or an agent acquainted with the facts stated in it, and the statutory form is executed before a notary [§ 713.08(2), (3)]. Which is why an incomplete notary block is the most common recording rejection.

It has eight required contents, including the date and method of service of your Notice to Owner, and of the copy served on the contractor or subcontractor where that was required [§ 713.08(1)]. The claim is the document that puts your own notice compliance on the public record, which is a good reason to have the proof of service in front of you while it is drafted.

Serving it is a separate step with its own deadline. Failure to serve the claim on the owner in the manner § 713.18 permits, before recording or within 15 days after, renders the claim voidable to the extent the failure or delay is shown to have been prejudicial to a person entitled to rely on the service [§ 713.08(4)(c)]. Voidable on a showing of prejudice is not the same thing as void, and it is worth knowing the difference before somebody uses the harsher version to talk you out of a real claim.

Claim honest numbers. Florida treats a wilfully exaggerated lien as a fraudulent lien: a complete defence, with forfeiture of the lien, damages including punitive damages up to the difference between what was claimed and what was due, and a third-degree felony for wilfully filing one. The same section says a minor mistake or a good faith dispute about the amount does not amount to wilful exaggeration [§ 713.31]. Lien what your documents support and pursue the disputed balance as a contract claim.

Chapter 5 of the Florida guide is the step-by-step, and it starts with pulling the Notice of Commencement — which the owner and legal description walkthrough covers in detail. County recording logistics for the biggest registry are in the Miami-Dade walkthrough.

Recording first does not put you first. Liens under §§ 713.05 and 713.06 attach and take priority as of the time the notice of commencement was recorded, or as of the recording of the claim of lien where no notice of commencement was filed [§ 713.07(2)]. Where the money is short, laborers are paid first, then everyone other than the contractor, then the contractor, prorated within a class [§ 713.06(4)].

Rung 5 — Counsel and foreclosure

Default deadline: a lien does not continue longer than one year after the claim of lien was recorded — or one year after recording an amended claim showing a later final furnishing date — unless an action to enforce it is commenced within that time. A lien continued beyond the year by commencing an action is not enforceable against creditors or subsequent purchasers for value without notice unless a notice of lis pendens is recorded [§ 713.22(1)]. That lis pendens sentence is the detail people learn about after the fact.

The owner can take the year away. A recorded Notice of Contest of Lien, served on you by the clerk, cuts the time to institute suit to 60 days from the date of service, and a lien whose holder fails to sue in time “is extinguished automatically.” Separately, on a complaint by any interested party the clerk issues a summons to show cause within 20 days why the lien should not be enforced by action or vacated and cancelled, and on a failure to show cause or to commence the action before the return date the court orders cancellation [§§ 713.22(2), 713.21(4)]. If either arrives, read this immediately and call a lawyer the same week.

The number that drives the decision is fees. In any action to enforce a lien, including one transferred to security, or to enforce a claim against a bond under this part, the prevailing party is entitled to a reasonable attorney fee for trial and appeal or for arbitration, taxed as part of costs [§ 713.29]. That is not simple loser-pays, because who prevailed is itself litigated when each side wins something. It does mean a clean, well-papered claim is worth more in settlement than its face value, and a sloppy one is worth considerably less.

There is one more owner move to know about, because it is the deadline most likely to catch you off guard. The owner may serve a written request for a sworn statement of account, and failure or refusal to furnish the statement under oath within 30 days — or furnishing a false or fraudulent one — deprives the lienor of the lien [§ 713.16(2)]. It arrives as a one-page form with a warning printed on it. Do not file it under “paperwork.”

What if I already signed a waiver?

Ask this before anything else, because a signed waiver can end the claim you are about to spend money on, and progress-payment waivers go out with almost every pay application.

Florida controls the shape of them [Fla. Stat. § 713.20]:

• A right to claim a lien may not be waived in advance, and any advance waiver is unenforceable. A lien right may be waived only to the extent of labour, services or materials furnished.
• There are two prescribed forms: a waiver and release upon progress payment, which waives the right to claim a lien for what was furnished through a stated date and expressly does not cover retainage or anything furnished after that date; and a waiver and release upon final payment, which does not carry that limitation.
• A person may not require a lienor to furnish a waiver different from those two forms, and a waiver not substantially similar to them is enforceable according to its own terms — which is why a home-grown form is worth reading closely rather than signing quickly.
• A lienor executing a waiver in exchange for a cheque may condition the waiver on payment of the cheque. In the absence of a payment bond protecting the owner, the owner may withhold from the contractor the amount of an unpaid conditioned cheque until the condition is satisfied.

So three questions decide what a signed waiver actually cost you. Was it a progress-payment form or a final-payment form? What through date does it carry? And was it conditioned on payment of a cheque that then cleared? A progress waiver through 30 April does nothing to a claim for May work or to retainage. A final waiver is a different conversation, and one for counsel.

What if they say they have not been paid either?

Take it seriously in both directions: it is a solvency signal about your customer, and it may be a defence they intend to raise.

Florida recognises pay-when-paid clauses as timing provisions and, where the language is clear enough to make payment a genuine condition precedent, pay-if-paid clauses as a real allocation of the risk that the owner never pays. Whether a particular clause is one or the other turns on its exact words and on case law rather than on a statute, so this is a question to put to a Florida construction attorney with the subcontract in front of them.

What is worth knowing without a lawyer is that the clause does not touch three things:

• Your lien. A contingent payment clause between you and the contractor is not a waiver of lien rights, and an advance waiver of the right to claim a lien is unenforceable in any event [§ 713.20(2)].
• The owner’s proper-payments exposure. That runs on whether the owner followed the statutory method, not on what your subcontract says.
• The question of whether your customer was in fact paid. If they were, the excuse is not true and the misapplication statute is in play.

Can I stop work if I am not being paid in Florida?

There is no Chapter 713 equivalent of a statutory suspension right, so this is a contract question rather than a statutory one, and the answer usually lives in your subcontract’s suspension and termination clauses and any notice-and-cure period they impose.

Two statutory points do bear on it. The Construction Contract Prompt Payment Law provides that, unless the contract specifically provides to the contrary, a dispute between an obligor and an obligee does not permit the obligor to withhold payment from that obligee or any other for labour, services or materials not subject to or affected by the dispute [§ 715.12(6)(e)] — which is aimed at the person withholding from you rather than at your right to stop. And demobilising can affect your final furnishing date, which is the date your 90-day recording window runs from.

Stopping work without following the contract is a decision with real breach exposure. It is one to make with advice rather than in frustration.

Two documents that can move your clock

Both arrive without fanfare and both matter more than they look.

A Notice of Termination. An owner may terminate the period of effectiveness of a Notice of Commencement by recording a sworn Notice of Termination containing the same information as the notice of commencement, its recording reference, a termination date not earlier than 30 days after recording, and a statement that all lienors have been paid in full — and it must be served on each lienor with a direct contract and each lienor who timely served a notice to owner before it is recorded. Where an owner or contractor knowingly makes a fraudulent statement in one, a damaged lienor has a right of action [§ 713.132]. If one arrives saying everybody has been paid and you have not been, that document is evidence.

A transfer of the lien to security. After you record, any person with an interest in the property or in the contract may transfer your lien off the land by depositing money or filing a surety bond with the clerk, in the amount demanded plus three years’ interest at the legal rate plus the greater of $5,000 or 25 percent of the amount demanded toward fees and costs — and where the court finds that excess insufficient to cover your fees and costs in the enforcement action, it must increase it [§ 713.24]. Your claim is now against the deposit or bond rather than the property. The deadline in § 713.22 still governs, and a contest notice can shorten a claim against that security as well.

Three remedies that run beside the lien

Why know all three when you will probably use one? Because they change what your customer believes about the next 60 days. A general contractor who has been paid for your work and kept the money is in a different conversation from one who is genuinely waiting on a draw.

If the job is bonded, you are on different paper

A payment bond furnished under § 713.23 exempts the owner from the rest of the part as to that direct contract, which means your claim runs against the bond rather than the property. The paper is different and the deadlines are unforgiving:

• Notice to contractor, before beginning or within 45 days of beginning to furnish, for a lienor not in privity with the contractor other than a laborer. A timely notice to owner served on the contractor satisfies this — which is one more reason to serve the notice to owner on everyone.
• Sworn notice of nonpayment served on the contractor with a copy to the surety, no later than 90 days after final furnishing (or, for rental equipment, 90 days after it was on site and available for use), as a condition precedent to recovery. It must be under oath, must separately specify any retainage, and a fraudulent notice of nonpayment forfeits rights under the bond.
• Suit within one year after the performance of the labour or completion of delivery, measured from your last day of furnishing and not by a certificate of occupancy or substantial completion.
• And the contractor can compress that: a recorded notice of contest of claim against payment bond cuts the time to sue to 60 days after service [§ 713.23(1)].

Two protections in the same section are worth knowing. A lienor has a direct right of action on the bond against the surety, and any provision in a bond issued on or after 1 October 2012 that restricts the protected classes, restricts venue, changes the bond’s effective duration, or adds conditions precedent beyond those in the part is unenforceable. A lienor also may not waive in advance the right to sue the surety.

Find out which track you are on in the first week, not in month four. Chapter 10 of the Florida guide covers the bond route.

When to jump rungs

• Your 90 days is inside a month. Record first. A negotiation is not a deadline extension, and Florida grants no cure for a late claim.
• A contest notice or a show-cause summons arrives. Skip everything and go to rung five, today.
• A request for a sworn statement of account arrives. Answer it under oath inside 30 days. Ignoring it costs the lien.
• Your customer says “we haven’t been paid either” twice. Take it seriously twice over. It is a solvency signal, and depending on the subcontract a contingent-payment clause may be something they intend to raise. Either reading argues for moving.
• Other claimants are unpaid on the same job. Not because of a race — Florida liens attach at the notice of commencement and prorate within a class — but because a troubled project has a finite amount of cash and attention.
• The job is bonded. Get on the right paper before spending money on the wrong remedy.

And the rule that governs the whole ladder: deadlines run regardless of negotiations. The 45 days does not pause because you are talking. Neither does the 90, the 15, the 30, or the year. Florida does extend a period whose last day is a Saturday, Sunday or specified holiday to the end of the next business day, and tolls recording and filing periods while the clerk’s office is closed in an emergency [§ 713.011] — a footnote, not a plan.

What this costs, and what we do

Rung one costs your time. Rung two costs $29 through SimpleLiens and is the single cheapest thing in this chapter relative to what it protects. Rung three costs a stamp. Rung four costs the recorder’s fee — $10 for the first page and $8.50 for each additional page under the state schedule — plus notarisation and whatever you value the drafting at. Rung five is an attorney engagement in a statute with prevailing-party fees, which cuts both ways.

The comparison that actually matters is a correct claim against an incorrect one. A claim recorded on day 91, served on day 20, or sworn to at the wrong number is not a cheaper claim. It is a defence handed to the other side.

Through SimpleLiens: notices are $29, a Claim of Lien is a flat fee, and a person checks the file before anything records — the owner from the Notice of Commencement and the deed, the description from the recorded instrument, the notice service dates carried onto the claim, online notarisation, e-recording, and certified-mail service of the recorded claim with proof kept. See what a Florida filing includes.

Subcontractors who rarely reach rung three serve a Notice to Owner on every non-privity job in the first week, automatically, before there is anything to escalate. That habit is the entire difference between a payment problem and a lost invoice.

Florida subcontractor nonpayment: quick answers

What are my options? Documented demand, Notice to Owner, owner escalation inside the proper-payments scheme, Claim of Lien, counsel. Plus prompt-pay interest, the 30-day remedy, and the misapplication statute.

Does a served NTO force payment? It obliges the owner to account for your claim out of progress payments and prorate where funds are short. It is not a freeze on the draw.

How long for the Claim of Lien? 90 days from your final furnishing, or 90 days from termination of the original contract, whichever comes first. Serve it within 15 days of recording.

Owner says they already paid the GC. That is the proper-payments question. Improper payments plus required retentions are what the property answers for.

Interest? Statutory rate plus 12 percent per annum from the 14th day after it was due, and not waivable in advance.

Does recording first help? Not for priority. Liens attach at the notice of commencement and prorate within a class.

Bonded job? Notice to contractor, sworn notice of nonpayment within 90 days, suit within a year — and a contractor can cut that to 60 days.