Alaska: Mechanic's Lien Deadlines & Notice Requirements

The short answer

Alaska gives most claimants 120 days after their own last work or delivery to
record a claim of lien. But if the owner records a notice of completion, the
window can collapse hard: down to just 15 days for anyone who hadn't already
recorded an optional "notice of right to lien" before the notice of
completion went on record. Alaska requires no preliminary notice at all — the
notice of right to lien is purely optional, and its real value is shifting
the burden of proof onto the owner and protecting the full 120-day window if
a notice of completion later shows up. Nothing in the statute requires
serving a copy of the recorded lien on the owner, despite what some
commercial lien-form templates claim. Once recorded, a lien only binds the
property for 6 months unless the claimant sues to enforce it or records a
written extension for another 6 months, and Alaska's homestead exemption
expressly does not shield a home from a lien for work done on it.

Requirements one by one

Governing law

Alaska's mechanic's lien law is Alaska Stat. Title 34, Chapter 35, Article 2,
"Mechanics and Materialmen," §§ 34.35.050 to 34.35.120. It's an older,
single-article statutory scheme rather than a modern comprehensive lien
code. Its central filing-deadline provision, § 34.35.068, was last
substantively amended in 2010 — a session law that stretched the recording
deadline from 90 to 120 days — so older secondary sources describing a
90-day Alaska deadline are out of date.

Who can claim

Section 34.35.050 lists six bases for a lien: performing labor at the
owner's or the owner's agent's request; being the trustee of an employee
benefit trust with a direct contract with the owner for payments into the
trust; furnishing materials, or furnishing equipment, under a contract with
the owner or the owner's agent; providing plans, surveys, or architectural
or engineering services under contract with the owner or the owner's agent;
or simply being the general contractor. Because most of these categories
require a contract with the owner or the owner's agent, § 34.35.115 does
the real work of extending the lien down the contracting chain: it deems
"every contractor, subcontractor, architect, builder, or other person having
charge" of any part of the work to be the owner's agent for lien purposes.
That reaches a subcontractor's own supplier, but no reported case confirms
whether it reaches further down, to a sub-subcontractor's supplier. Nothing
in the chapter conditions lien rights on holding a contractor's license.

Preliminary notice

Not required. A claimant may — but doesn't have to — record a notice of
right to lien before starting work (§ 34.35.064). Doing so puts the burden
of proof on the owner to show it didn't know of or consent to the work,
rather than making the claimant prove the owner's knowledge and consent.
Skipping it costs nothing directly, but it does matter later: a claimant who
never gave a notice of right to lien loses the benefit of the full 120-day
filing window if the owner ever records a notice of completion.

Deadline to file the lien

If the owner never records a notice of completion, the standard rule
applies: a claim of lien must be recorded within 120 days after the
claimant completes its contract or stops furnishing labor, material,
services, or equipment (§ 34.35.068(a)). If the owner does record a notice
of completion, the 120 days survives only for a claimant who had already
recorded a notice of right to lien before that point; everyone else gets
just 15 days after the notice of completion is recorded (§ 34.35.068(b)). A
lien recorded outside whichever window applies is simply unenforceable
(§ 34.35.068(c)) — this is a hard cutoff, not a priority penalty.

Notice of completion effect

An owner may record a notice of completion once the project is genuinely
done; recording one before the work is actually finished is void
(§ 34.35.071(d)). Before recording it, the owner must give at least 5 days'
advance notice to any claimant who had already recorded a notice of right to
lien or a stop-lending notice (§ 34.35.071(a)). Its only real effect is on
the filing clock: it slashes the deadline from 120 days to 15 days for any
claimant who skipped the optional notice of right to lien. Labor or
materials furnished later purely to fix defective work or satisfy a warranty
— with no extra pay involved — don't create new lien exposure after a notice
of completion is recorded (§ 34.35.071(e)).

Serving the lien on the owner

There isn't a service requirement. Nothing in §§ 34.35.050 through 34.35.120
requires a claimant to serve or deliver a copy of the recorded claim of lien
on the owner. A commercial Alaska lien-form template in circulation asserts
that a copy must be served on the owner "under AS 34.35.070" — but that
section only lists what the claimant's sworn statement itself has to say
(the property description, the owner's name, the amount due, and so on); it
says nothing about serving anyone. The only owner-facing communications the
chapter actually requires are the claimant's optional pre-work notice of
right to lien and, if the owner chooses to trigger it, the owner's own
notice of completion.

Deadline to sue to foreclose

A recorded lien "does not bind real property for more than six months after
the claim of lien is recorded" unless the claimant sues to enforce it within
that six months, or records a written extension notice in the same
recording office within the original six months — which buys another six
months from that recording (§ 34.35.080(a)). Separately, an owner or a
contractor who disputes the lien can record a bond worth one and one-half
times the claimed amount; doing so frees the property from the lien
immediately and shifts the fight to the bond instead (§ 34.35.072).

Homestead/residential extras

Chapter 35 adds no residential-specific formality of its own. Alaska's
general homestead exemption protects up to $54,000 of an individual's
equity in a principal residence from creditors (§ 09.38.010) — but the
exemptions act carves out exactly this situation: a creditor may levy
against otherwise-exempt property to enforce a claim for "labor or materials
furnished to make, repair, improve... the property" (§ 09.38.065(a)(2)(B)),
and the same section separately states that the exemptions chapter "does not
affect any statutory lien" at all (§ 09.38.065(b)). In practice, a
mechanic's lien for work on a home reaches that home regardless of the
homestead exemption.

What trips people up

Skipping the optional notice of right to lien feels harmless until an owner
records a notice of completion — at that point, a claimant who never
recorded one has only 15 days left, not 120. Second, the filing deadline and
the enforcement deadline run on completely different triggers: the 120 (or
15) day filing clock runs from the claimant's own work, while the separate
6-month enforcement clock runs from the date the lien was recorded. Third, a
commercial lien-form template circulating for Alaska tells claimants they
must serve a copy of the recorded lien on the owner "under AS 34.35.070" —
that section says no such thing, and nothing else in the chapter does
either. Fourth, Alaska's privity structure isn't a flat "any tier" rule like
many states use; it runs through a legal fiction that treats contractors and
subcontractors "having charge" of the work as the owner's agent, and how far
that reaches down the chain hasn't been tested in Alaska's courts.

Common questions

Do I need to send a notice before I start work in Alaska?
No. Alaska has no mandatory preliminary notice. You may record an optional
notice of right to lien before starting, which shifts the burden of proof
to the owner and protects your full 120-day filing window if the owner later
records a notice of completion.

What happens if the owner records a notice of completion?
If you already recorded a notice of right to lien, you keep the standard
120-day filing deadline. If you didn't, your deadline drops to just 15 days
after the notice of completion is recorded.

Do I have to serve a copy of my lien on the property owner?
No. Nothing in Alaska's mechanic's lien statute requires it, even though
some commercial lien-form templates say otherwise.

Can a lien reach someone's home in Alaska?
Yes. Alaska's homestead exemption doesn't protect a home from a mechanic's
lien for labor or materials furnished to improve that home.

Statutes and sources

• Alaska Stat. § 34.35.050 (lien for labor or materials furnished) —
  https://law.justia.com/codes/alaska/title-34/chapter-35/article-2/section-34-35-050/
  (accessed 2026-07-05)
• Alaska Stat. § 34.35.115 (persons considered agent of owner) —
  https://law.justia.com/codes/alaska/title-34/chapter-35/article-2/section-34-35-115/
  (accessed 2026-07-05)
• Alaska Stat. § 34.35.064 (notice of right to lien) —
  https://law.justia.com/codes/alaska/title-34/chapter-35/article-2/section-34-35-064/
  (accessed 2026-07-05)
• Alaska Stat. § 34.35.068 (time periods for claiming liens) —
  https://law.justia.com/codes/alaska/title-34/chapter-35/article-2/section-34-35-068/
  (accessed 2026-07-05)
• Alaska Stat. § 34.35.070 (claim of lien; required contents) —
  https://law.justia.com/codes/alaska/title-34/chapter-35/article-2/section-34-35-070/
  (accessed 2026-07-05)
• Alaska Stat. § 34.35.071 (notice of completion) —
  https://law.justia.com/codes/alaska/title-34/chapter-35/article-2/section-34-35-071/
  (accessed 2026-07-05)
• Alaska Stat. § 34.35.072 (bond to discharge a claim of lien) —
  https://law.justia.com/codes/alaska/title-34/chapter-35/article-2/section-34-35-072/
  (accessed 2026-07-05)
• Alaska Stat. § 34.35.080 (duration of lien; enforcement deadline) —
  https://law.justia.com/codes/alaska/title-34/chapter-35/article-2/section-34-35-080/
  (accessed 2026-07-05)
• Alaska Stat. § 09.38.010 (homestead exemption) —
  https://law.justia.com/codes/alaska/title-9/chapter-38/section-09-38-010/
  (accessed 2026-07-05)
• Alaska Stat. § 09.38.065 (claims enforceable against exempt property) —
  https://law.justia.com/codes/alaska/title-9/chapter-38/section-09-38-065/
  (accessed 2026-07-05)