Florida Claim of Lien: The 90-Day Deadline From Final Furnishing, and the One-Year Clock That Follows

A Florida subcontractor's right to record a claim of lien does not run from the day the general contractor finishes the job, the day the owner occupies the building, or the day an invoice goes unpaid for 60 days. It runs from one specific date: the lienor's own "final furnishing" of labor, services, or materials to that project. Get that date wrong and the 90-day window closes before anyone notices.

//The Date That Starts the Clock

Florida Statute 713.08(5) sets the deadline: "The claim of lien may be recorded at any time during the progress of the work or thereafter but not later than 90 days after the final furnishing of the labor or services or materials by the lienor." Not 90 days after the contract ends. Not 90 days after the general contractor's final walkthrough. Ninety days after that lienor's own last day of work or last delivery to the site.

Worked example: an electrical subcontractor completes rough-in and finishes its scope on February 10, 2026, then leaves the site. The general contractor doesn't finish the overall project until June. The electrical sub's 90-day clock still started February 10. Counting forward — 18 remaining days in February, 31 in March, 30 in April, 11 in May — the recording deadline lands on May 11, 2026, regardless of what the rest of the job schedule looks like.

On a multi-trade job, this means every subcontractor is running its own separate clock. A tile contractor who finishes in April has until mid-July. A drywall crew that wrapped up in January was already out of time by late April. Nobody else's schedule extends anyone's deadline.

//What the Claim of Lien Has to Say

• +The lienor's name and address.
• +The name of the person with whom the lienor contracted, or the owner's name if the lienor contracted directly with the owner.
• +A description of the labor, services, or materials furnished and their contract price or value.
• +A description of the real property sufficient to identify it.
• +The owner's name.
• +The dates of first and last furnishing of labor, services, or materials.
• +The amount unpaid.

Fla. Stat. § 713.08 also allows a claim to be amended during the recording period without prejudicing anyone who relied in good faith on the original filing, and it says that "the negligent inclusion or omission of any information in the claim of lien which has not prejudiced the owner does not constitute a default that operates to defeat an otherwise valid lien." A paperwork mistake is not automatically fatal — but a missed date, a wrong legal description, or a vague scope description is still worth getting right the first time, because whether an error "prejudiced the owner" is a fact question a court decides later, not something to bank on in advance.

//Recording Is Not the Same as Serving

A claim of lien that is recorded but never served is exposed. Section 713.08 cross-references the service procedure in section 713.18: the claim must be served on the owner, in the manner that section sets out, either before it is recorded or within 15 days after recording. Miss that window and "the claim of lien [is] voidable to the extent that the failure or delay is shown to have been prejudicial to any person." Recording the document at the courthouse protects nothing by itself if the owner never actually received notice of it.

//The One-Year Clock That Starts After Recording

A recorded, properly served claim of lien still does not last indefinitely. Florida Statute 713.22 caps it: "A lien provided by this part does not continue for a longer period than 1 year after the claim of lien has been recorded or 1 year after the recording of an amended claim of lien that shows a later date of final furnishing of labor, services, or materials, unless within that time an action to enforce the lien is commenced in a court of competent jurisdiction." Recording the claim starts a second deadline, not a permanent right. If no lawsuit to foreclose the lien is filed within that year, the lien expires on its own.

//Why This Trips Up People Who Know the Statute

The failure mode is rarely ignorance of the 90-day rule. It is picking the wrong trigger date. "Final furnishing" means that lienor's own last delivery of labor or material to that specific project — not the last date work could theoretically have continued, not the date retainage was due, not the date the final punch list closed out for the whole job. A subcontractor who returns to the site weeks later for a minor warranty fix or a small punch-list item can reset that date, but relying on an incidental return trip to buy more time is not a filing strategy; it is a coincidence that may or may not hold up.

The fix is procedural, not legal: every job needs a dated record of last furnishing — a delivery ticket, a signed daily log, a final invoice date — kept separately from the general contractor's own schedule. That single date is what everything else in this chain runs from.

This is a calculation of statutory deadlines, not legal advice, and it does not account for the specific facts of any one project or any lien waiver already signed on the job.

If you want the dates for one of your own Florida jobs laid out on a single page, email info@noumansadiq.com with the job's start date.