Most Florida lienors know the headline rule. Record the claim of lien, and there is a year to sue. That is true right up until the moment the other side decides otherwise, and Chapter 713 gives owners two ways to decide otherwise. Both of them run on a clock the lienor does not start and may not even see begin.
The Default, and the Trap Inside It
A construction lien lasts one year from recording of the claim of lien, or one year from recording an amended claim showing a later date of final furnishing, unless an action to enforce it is commenced within that period. § 713.22(1), Fla. Stat.
Filing suit is not the end of the analysis. The same subsection provides that a lien continued past the year by commencing an action is not enforceable against creditors or subsequent purchasers for valuable consideration and without notice unless a notice of lis pendens is recorded. A lienor who sues on day 360 and records nothing has preserved the claim against the owner and can still lose priority to whoever buys or lends next.
Accelerator One: Sixty Days
An owner or the owner’s attorney may record a Notice of Contest of Lien. § 713.22(2), Fla. Stat. The statutory form tells the lienor that suit is limited to 60 days from the date of service, and the statute is blunt about the consequence: a lienor who is served and fails to institute suit within 60 days after service has its lien extinguished automatically.
Two details decide who survives this.
The clock runs from service, not from recording. That distinction is widely misstated, and it matters when a lienor calculates backward from the wrong date.
More importantly, the clerk serves the notice at the address shown in the claim of lien or its most recent amendment. A company that moved offices, changed its registered agent, or used a project address on a lien recorded eight months ago has aimed the notice at a mailbox nobody checks. The statute does not care. The 60 days runs regardless.
Accelerator Two: Twenty Days
The faster route is section 713.21(4). Any interested party files a complaint, and the clerk issues a summons requiring the lienor to show cause within 20 days after service why the lien should not be enforced by action or vacated and canceled of record. If the lienor neither shows cause nor commences the action before the return date, the court orders cancellation.
Florida courts read this literally. The 20-day period allows no exceptions such as extensions of time. Dracon Construction, Inc. v. Facility Construction Management, Inc., 828 So. 2d 1069, 1070 (Fla. 4th DCA 2002). And a trial court has no discretion to excuse a failure to comply. Sturge v. LCS Development Corp., 643 So. 2d 53 (Fla. 3d DCA 1994).
The trap that catches sophisticated contractors is doing something reasonable instead of the required thing. In one Fourth District case, a contractor served with a show cause order filed a motion to compel arbitration under its construction contract rather than commencing an action on the lien. The court held that the lien and the underlying payment dispute are not the same thing, that the contractor could have filed a counterclaim in the owner’s action while separately moving to arbitrate the arbitrable issues, and it directed discharge of the lien. Brookshire v. GP Construction of Palm Beach, Inc., No. 4D08-2643 (Fla. 4th DCA Nov. 5, 2008).
Why This Is an Operational Problem, Not a Legal One
Nothing above is difficult law. Every one of these deadlines is survivable if the lienor knows it started.
That is the actual exposure. A company recording liens across dozens of active jobs is running dozens of independent clocks, none of which it controls, several of which can be triggered without warning by an owner’s filing, and at least one of which is served to whatever address appeared on a document recorded months earlier. The failure is almost never a misreading of Chapter 713. It is mail that reached the wrong desk, or reached the right desk in week three of a four-week window.
Which makes the useful question a practical one. Who in your organization sees a Notice of Contest the day it arrives, and knows what it means?