Colorado mechanics’ lien and bond deadlines
Work on Private Property
Colorado lien deadline
Filing deadline
Statement of Lien (with the Notice of Intent and its affidavits) is recorded with the County Clerk and Recorder of each county containing the property. Deadlines: day/piece laborers furnishing no materials - within 2 months after completion of the improvement; everyone else - within 4 months after that claimant's own last labor/materials (punch-list, warranty, remedial, or trivial work does not extend the date). On one- or two-family homes the window effectively shrinks to 2 months after completion when a bona fide purchaser exists. A recorded extension notice can push the deadline to the earlier of 4 months after completion or 6 months after the extension filing, but likely not for residences. No weekend/holiday grace on the deadline. THREE THINGS FROM § 38-22-109 READ FROM THE OFFICIAL 2025 C.R.S. ON 1 AUGUST 2026 THAT THIS RECORD DID NOT CARRY. (1) WHEN THE CLOCK STARTS ON A STALLED JOB: § 38-22-109(7) makes abandonment ‘equivalent to a completion’, and defines abandonment as discontinuance of all labor, work, services and furnishing of laborers or materials FOR A THREE-MONTH PERIOD. On a job that simply stops, completion is deemed to occur three months later and the 2- and 4-month windows run from there. (2) A CURE RIGHT: § 38-22-109(6) allows new or amended statements to be filed within the same periods ‘for the purpose of curing any mistake or for the purpose of more fully complying’ — so a defect noticed while the window is still open is fixable. (3) ⚠ THE LIEN DIES AT ONE YEAR UNLESS YOU FEED IT: § 38-22-109(8) says no lien ‘shall hold the property, or remain effective longer than one year from the filing of such lien’ unless, WITHIN THIRTY DAYS AFTER EACH ANNUAL ANNIVERSARY of filing, the claimant records an affidavit stating that the improvements have not been completed. Subsection (9) excuses that annual affidavit once the § 38-22-110 notice has been filed and an action commenced. A claimant who records early on a long project and then waits loses the lien on its first birthday without anyone telling it.
Notice prerequisites
No notice is required before starting work. An optional statutory Notice to Owner (available to everyone but the principal contractor) obliges the recipient to withhold enough funds to cover the claim; a separate Notice to Disburser can compel a construction-fund disburser to pay the claimant directly. The mandatory pre-lien step is a Notice of Intent to File a Lien Statement, with a copy of the lien, served on the owner (and on the principal contractor if the claimant is a sub/supplier) at least 10 full days before recording, with notarized affidavits of service.
Service on the owner
Service (Notice of Intent plus copy of the lien statement) must precede filing by at least 10 full days, made personally or by certified/registered mail return-receipt on the owner or agent, and also on the principal contractor for lower-tier claimants; notarized proof of service accompanies the recorded statement.
Enforcement
Foreclosure suit must be filed in district court of the project county within 6 months after the later of the last labor/materials furnished by anyone or completion of the improvement, and a lis pendens must be recorded in the same window (even if the lien was bonded off).
Colo. Rev. Stat. sec. 38-22-101 et seq. (trust fund at 38-22-127; excessive amounts at 38-22-128; public verified claims at 38-26-107); SB26-074 (Ch. 39), eff. 12 Aug 2026
Colorado Legal Resources — published by LexisNexis, for the Colorado General Assembly. This state publishes no code on its own servers; this is the free public access it points to.
Work on Public Property
No mechanics lien attaches to public property in any state. On a government job the remedy is the prime contractor’s payment bond, and it runs on its own act with its own deadlines — not the lien deadlines above.
- Who — The public body that awarded the contract. Not the contractor, not the surety.
- When — No day-count from your work. File any time up to final settlement. § 38-26-107.
- How — None prescribed — file a verified statement with the contracting body.
- If late — You lose the fund-withholding remedy, not the bond. Read below — the two are different.
- Sue by — 6 months after completion. § 38-26-105(1).
Is there a bond at all?
'more than fifty thousand dollars' for a contract with a county, municipality or school district (§ 38-26-105(1)). § 38-26-106(3) sets the applicability tiers: more than $50,000 for a contract with a county, city and county, municipality, school district or other political subdivision; more than $150,000 for a contract with the State; and more than $150,000 for a local-government contract awarded to a private entity for public works situated on publicly owned property using public or private money or financing. § 38-26-105(2) lets the state or any of those bodies require a bond on a contract of $50,000 or less anyway, so a claimant on a small job should ask rather than assume. Colorado is not a hundred-percent state. § 38-26-106(1) requires a bond 'in a penal sum NOT LESS THAN ONE-HALF of the total amount payable under the terms of the contract' - half, not all - with a special rule for contracts of five hundred million dollars or more, where the penal sum may instead be half the maximum payable in any one calendar year. On a contested job the bond can be exhausted by claimants ahead of you, and there is no statutory pro rata scheme in this article to share it out. § 38-26-107(1) also makes it 'unlawful for any person to divide a public works contract into two or more separate contracts for the sole purpose of evading' the publication requirement, so a project that looks like several small contracts should be asked about. One item runs the claimant's way: the surety pays the amounts due 'together with INTEREST AT THE RATE OF EIGHT PERCENT PER ANNUM' (§ 38-26-106(2)).
Who can claim on it
§ 38-26-105(1): 'Subcontractors, materialmen, mechanics, suppliers of rental equipment, and others may have a right of action for amounts lawfully due them from the contractor or subcontractor directly against the principal and surety of such bond.' The bond itself is conditioned on payment of 'all amounts lawfully due to all persons supplying or furnishing such person or such person's subcontractors with labor, laborers, materials, rental machinery, tools, or equipment used or performed in the prosecution of the work' — so it reaches suppliers to subcontractors, and does not on its face reach a supplier to a supplier. FROM 12 AUGUST 2026 THE CLASS IS WIDER, and wider in a way that matters to anyone who sold a SERVICE rather than a thing. SB26-074 amends § 38-26-107(1) so the person who may file is one who has furnished 'labor, materials, EQUIPMENT, SERVICES, sustenance, or other supplies used or consumed by a contractor or their subcontractor.' Equipment and services are named expressly for the first time. Before that date a testing house, a survey firm or a services-only subcontractor had to argue it furnished 'other supplies'; after it, it does not.
What notice you owe
Every unpaid claimant who wants to reach the withheld contract funds. § 38-26-107 draws no privity distinction — a first-tier subcontractor files the same verified statement as a remote supplier. No notice of any kind to the contractor or the surety is prescribed anywhere in the article.
Who it goes to
'the board, officer, person, or other contracting body by whom the contract was awarded' — the awarding public entity. Not the contractor. Not the surety.
By when
No day-count runs from furnishing. The verified statement may be filed 'at any time up to and including the time of final settlement for the work contracted to be done.' The claimant's warning of that date is the entity's own publication: for contracts exceeding $150,000 the contracting body must, no later than ten days before final settlement is made, publish notice of the final settlement at least twice in a newspaper of general circulation, or in an electronic medium approved by the executive director of the department of personnel.
How it must be served
None prescribed. The statute requires only that a verified statement be filed with the contracting body.
What it has to say
'a verified statement of the amount due and unpaid on account of the claim.' Nothing further is enumerated. FROM 12 AUGUST 2026 SB26-074 SETTLES TWO THINGS CLAIMANTS ROUTINELY GET WRONG, both by amendment to § 38-26-107(1). FIRST, A DISPUTED AMOUNT MAY BE CLAIMED: the statement is of the amount due and unpaid 'WHETHER THE AMOUNT IS DISPUTED OR UNDISPUTED.' You need not concede the disputed part away in order to file. SECOND, DELAY AND LOST-PRODUCTIVITY COSTS BELONG IN THE NUMBER IF YOUR CONTRACT ALLOWS THEM: 'NOTHING IN THIS ARTICLE 26 PROHIBITS THE INCLUSION OF COSTS OTHERWISE ALLOWED UNDER A CONTRACT IN A VERIFIED STATEMENT OF CLAIM, INCLUDING COSTS INCURRED AS A RESULT OF DELAY, LOST PRODUCTIVITY, OR OTHER DISRUPTION TO THE WORK.' The gate is your contract, not the statute - read it before adding them.
If the notice is late, or never given
It costs the fund-withholding remedy rather than the bond: without a timely verified statement the contracting body has nothing to hold back and pays the contractor out. The statute says so in terms - § 38-26-107(3): 'Failure on the part of a claimant to comply with the provisions of sections 38-26-101, 38-26-106, and this section shall relieve the board, officer, body, or person by whom such contract was awarded from any liability for making payment to the contractor.' The entity that pays the contractor out over your unfiled claim owes you nothing for having done so. AND COMMENCING SUIT IS NOT ENOUGH TO KEEP THE MONEY THERE. § 38-26-107(2): the funds 'shall not be withheld longer than ninety days following the date fixed for final settlement as published unless an action is commenced within that time to enforce such unpaid claim AND A NOTICE OF LIS PENDENS IS FILED WITH the person or contracting body by whom the contract was awarded.' Two acts, both inside the ninety days, and the second one is not filed at the courthouse - it is delivered to the awarding entity. Subsection (3) then directs that entity to pay the contractor everything 'not the subject of suit and lis pendens notices.' A claimant who sues in time and never delivers the lis pendens can win a judgment against a fund that has already been paid away. Whether failing to file the verified statement also bars the separate right of action against principal and surety under § 38-26-105(1) is not answered by the statutory text. Treat it as unsettled rather than assuming either answer.
When the suit clock starts
Two different events, and they are not the same clock. The action against principal and surety on the bond under § 38-26-105(1) runs from COMPLETION OF THE WORK. The action to recover on a filed verified statement under § 38-26-107 runs from the published DATE FIXED FOR FINAL SETTLEMENT.
How long you have to sue
§ 38-26-105(1): 'Such action for laborers, materials, rental machinery, tools, or equipment furnished or labor rendered must be brought within six months after the completion of the work.' § 38-26-107: any person whose claims have not been paid 'may commence an action to recover the same' at any time within ninety days following the date fixed for final settlement as published. After that ninety days the contracting body 'shall pay to the contractor such moneys and funds as are not the subject of suit and lis pendens notices.'
Where suit is brought
Not prescribed by either section.
The trap
Colorado's 'notice' is served on nobody in the construction chain — it is a verified statement filed with the awarding public entity, and its deadline is a published final settlement date rather than any count from the claimant's own work — while the action on the bond itself carries a separate and much shorter fuse hidden in the middle of § 38-26-105(1), six months after completion of the work, so a claimant who files its statement and then patiently waits out the ninety-day settlement window can arrive at the courthouse with the bond action already time-barred. And on the fund side there is a second act that gets forgotten: § 38-26-107(2) releases the withheld money at ninety days unless the claimant BOTH commences an action AND files a notice of lis pendens WITH THE AWARDING ENTITY - suing alone does not hold the fund.
The act itself
No popular name. Article 26 is headed 'Contractor's Bonds and Lien on Funds' — the second half of that title is the part people forget.
Where this comes from
C.R.S. §§ 38-26-105 to 38-26-110. Bond and right of action at § 38-26-105; applicability and thresholds at § 38-26-106; the claim-filing and fund-withholding machinery at § 38-26-107.
Colorado Legal Resources — published by LexisNexis, for the Colorado General Assembly.
Statutory summary as of 1 August 2026. Not legal advice; confirm with a lawyer licensed in Colorado.