Over the past 10 years lien waivers have changed. What was once a half page, simple, fill-in-the-blank form, has morphed into a full-fledged legal document often requiring contract administration to figure out what the form means and what’s actually being waived to receive payment. Another problem is tracking what’s actually been waived per project. Finally, to complicate matters further, some of these prime contractor homegrown forms can be misleading and demand concessions never designed to be part of a waiver process. This problem is beginning to be addressed. Recent statute changes in states like Texas and California have added statutory language requiring specific lien waiver forms designed to protect suppliers and laborers.
A lien waiver is a document provided to the owner of a property stating the creditor has received all payment and gives up the right to impose a lien on the property. As stated above, however, varying state law and other circumstances can affect lien waivers.
As mentioned, over the past couple years, and most recently with states like Georgia, California (2013) and Texas (2012), lien waivers have become statutory forms with specific required verbiage extracted from the state’s mechanic’s lien statute; forms you must be able to produce. To solve this problem and to assist with the management of lien waivers, NACM’s Secured Transaction Services division will add the STS Lien Waiver Manager to its online portal. From the waiver manager you’ll be able to create, print and manage all these state specific statutory Lien Waivers, merging project data from the STS System, on a national basis.
Finally there’s a system created by the leading association for Credit Managers, NACM, for suppliers and subs. The STS Lien Waiver Manager will produce and/or manage, if using waivers provided by your customer or a prime, lien waivers for all 50 states. Users will be able to load project information in the MLBS System, then merge, print, or reprint statutorily compliant partial, final, conditional, and unconditional waivers.