Louisiana: Mechanic's Lien Deadlines & Notice Requirements

The short answer

Louisiana is the one state in this survey with no common-law "mechanic's
lien" at all. Its civil-law tradition instead grants certain claimants a
"privilege" on the property under the Private Works Act, La. R.S. 9:4801 et
seq. The single most important fact about the deadline is that it isn't
fixed — it depends on whether the owner has recorded a "notice of
termination of the work." With no such notice on file, every claimant has
60 days after substantial completion or abandonment to file a statement of
claim or privilege. The moment the owner records that notice, the window
collapses to just 30 days for most claimants (60 days for the general
contractor). Separately, a general contractor only keeps its privilege on a
job over $100,000 by recording its own "notice of contract" before work
begins. Once a statement of claim or privilege is filed, the claimant has
one year to sue to enforce it.

Requirements one by one

Governing law

Louisiana's private-improvement privilege law is the Private Works Act,
La. R.S. 9:4801 et seq. (Title 9, Chapter 2, Part I). It's a civil-law
scheme — the security device is a "privilege," not a common-law lien — with
roots going back centuries to the French Civil Code's protections for
workmen, comprehensively revised in 1981 and again in 2019 (effective
January 1, 2020) to clean up decades of piecemeal amendments.

Who can claim

The Act splits claimants into two sections based on privity with the
owner. Section 9:4801 gives a privilege directly to anyone contracting with
the owner: contractors, the owner's own laborers and employees, sellers of
movables that become part of the immovable or are consumed at the site,
lessors of movables under written contract, and professional consultants
(and their subconsultants) engaged by the owner. Section 9:4802 covers
everyone else in the chain — subcontractors, laborers or employees of the
contractor or a subcontractor, sellers, lessors, and professional
consultants of the contractor or a subcontractor — giving them "a claim
against the owner and a claim against the contractor," secured by "a
privilege on the immovable on which the work is performed."

Preliminary notice

Most claimants don't send any notice before work starts; their rights arise
automatically under §§ 9:4801 or 9:4802. What Louisiana requires instead is
a filing by the general contractor: § 9:4811 requires "written notice of a
contract between a general contractor and an owner" to be recorded "before
the contractor begins work" on any job whose price "exceeds one hundred
thousand dollars." Filing it doesn't just protect the general contractor —
it determines which of two very different filing-deadline tracks every
other claimant on the project falls into. Skip it on a job over that
threshold, and the consequence is severe: the general contractor "shall not
enjoy any privilege" at all and "shall not be entitled to file a statement
of claim or privilege for any amounts due him."

Deadline to file the lien

Everything in § 9:4822 branches on whether a notice of contract was
properly and timely filed. If it wasn't, every claimant — in privity or
not — has a single 60-day window "after ... the filing of a notice of
termination of the work" or "the substantial completion or abandonment of
the work, if a notice of termination is not filed." If it was, the tracks
split further: non-general-contractor claimants get 30 days after the
termination notice or 6 months after completion/abandonment, while the
general contractor itself gets 60 days after the termination notice or 7
months after completion/abandonment.

Notice of completion effect

This is the mechanism that drives the entire deadline structure. The
owner's recorded "notice of termination of the work" doesn't just start a
clock — it dramatically shortens every claimant's filing window, from as
long as 6 or 7 months down to just 30 or 60 days. An owner isn't required
to record one, but a general contractor can force the issue: if the work is
substantially complete or abandoned, the owner must file a notice of
termination within 10 days of the general contractor's request, and if the
owner refuses, the general contractor "may institute a summary proceeding"
to get a court judgment that has the same effect.

Serving the lien on the owner

Delivery to the owner only comes up on the notice-of-contract track, and
only for non-general-contractor claimants. Section 9:4822(B) requires those
claimants to "deliver to the owner ... a copy of the statement of claim or
privilege" inside the same 30-day/6-month deadline as filing — but only "if
his address is given in the notice of contract." On the default track,
where no notice of contract was ever filed, there's no delivery-to-owner
step at all; filing alone preserves the claim.

Deadline to sue to foreclose

Section 9:4823(A)(2) extinguishes the claim and privilege if the claimant
"does not institute an action against the owner for the enforcement of the
claim or privilege within one year after filing the statement of claim or
privilege to preserve it." That one-year clock runs from the filing date
itself, not from the last day of work or from any notice of termination.

Homestead/residential extras

Louisiana's residential rule is a disclosure requirement aimed at the
contractor, not the claimant. The "Residential Truth in Construction Act"
(§§ 9:4851-9:4855) applies to improvements to a home "occupied by the owner
thereof principally as a single-family dwelling or residence." Before or
when signing a contract for that kind of work, the contractor must deliver
a statutory "NOTICE OF LIEN RIGHTS" disclosure warning the homeowner that
unpaid subcontractors and suppliers can lien the home even if the owner
already paid the contractor in full, and suggesting protective steps (a
payment bond, lien waivers). Skipping the notice "shall not be considered a
condition of the construction contract" — it doesn't undo the deal — but a
contractor who falsifies the notice or fraudulently obtains the owner's
signature faces a separate civil action for damages and attorney fees under
§ 9:4855. Residential work also gets one deadline extension: a claimant who
gives the owner 10 days' advance notice of nonpayment, when no notice of
contract was filed, gets 70 days instead of 60 to file.

What trips people up

Because the filing deadline depends entirely on whether and when a notice
of termination gets recorded, a claimant tracking only "months since
substantial completion" can be blindsided — if the owner records that
notice, the 6- or 7-month runway can shrink to 30 or 60 days overnight.
Separately, general contractors on a job near the $100,000 threshold
sometimes treat the notice of contract as optional paperwork; § 9:4811(D)
makes it an all-or-nothing gate on a qualifying job — miss it, and there's
no privilege and no fallback statement of claim to file at all.

Common questions

Does Louisiana call this a "mechanic's lien"?
No. Louisiana law grants a "privilege," not a lien, under the Private
Works Act — the mechanics are similar in effect (a security interest in the
property), but the vocabulary and civil-law framework are different from
every other state in this survey.

How do I know how much time I have to file?
Check whether a notice of contract was filed and whether a notice of
termination has been recorded — those two facts, not just how long ago you
last worked, set your actual deadline under § 9:4822.

I'm doing residential remodeling work — do I get more time to file?
Only in one specific situation: if no notice of contract was filed and you
give the owner 10 days' advance notice of nonpayment, § 9:4822(D) extends
your filing window to 70 days instead of 60. Otherwise the standard tracks
apply the same way as on any other project.

Statutes and sources

• La. R.S. 9:4801 (privilege for direct-contract claimants) —
  https://legis.la.gov/Legis/Law.aspx?d=108050
  (accessed 2026-07-05)
• La. R.S. 9:4802 (claim and privilege for non-privity claimants) —
  https://legis.la.gov/legis/Law.aspx?d=108051
  (accessed 2026-07-05)
• La. R.S. 9:4811 (notice of contract; $100,000 threshold) —
  https://legis.la.gov/legis/Law.aspx?d=108056
  (accessed 2026-07-05)
• La. R.S. 9:4822 (preservation of claims/privileges; filing deadlines;
  notice of termination) —
  https://legis.la.gov/legis/Law.aspx?d=108062
  (accessed 2026-07-05)
• La. R.S. 9:4823 (extinguishment; 1-year enforcement deadline) —
  https://legis.la.gov/legis/Law.aspx?d=108063
  (accessed 2026-07-05)
• La. R.S. 9:4851 (Residential Truth in Construction Act scope) —
  https://legis.la.gov/legis/Law.aspx?d=108071
  (accessed 2026-07-05)
• La. R.S. 9:4852 (contractor's Notice of Lien Rights disclosure) —
  https://legis.la.gov/legis/Law.aspx?d=108072
  (accessed 2026-07-05)
• La. R.S. 9:4855 (penalty for falsified or fraudulently obtained notice) —
  https://legis.la.gov/legis/Law.aspx?d=108075
  (accessed 2026-07-05)