Darke County Construction Notice (Notice of Commencement (Individual)) Form

This Ohio notice of commencement is written for one person: a natural person who is the sole owner of the real property and who contracts for the improvement in the capacity of owner. The form recites that configuration as fixed text in its first section, leaving the owner a name and a mailing address to enter there, and it carries one signature block and one sworn certificate. It follows Ohio Revised Code Section 1311.04 item by item as amended in 2025.

A sworn notice, not an acknowledged one

Section 1311.04(B) requires the notice of commencement to be in affidavit form and, in item (B)(13), to carry an affidavit of the owner verifying it. The operative paragraph has the owner, first duly sworn, give notice of the commencement of an improvement to the described property and swear that the notice is true and correct. The certificate after the signature is a jurat reading sworn to and subscribed before me, the wording Section 147.542(C)(3)(b) accepts for that act; an acknowledgment certificate is not used where an oath was administered (Section 147.542(D)), so the form prints none.

The four year clock and the two statements the statute dictates

House Bill 96 of the 136th General Assembly, effective September 30, 2025, rewrote Section 1311.04(S): a notice of commencement now expires four years after its filing date unless the notice or an amendment specifies otherwise. The same act added a mandatory expiration statement, printed here word for word in Section 10 beside one blank for a different date when the owner specifies one. Section 9 prints the other prescribed statement, the notice to lien claimants and subsequent purchasers. Older forms still recite six years; this one recites the current four.

What the recorded notice fixes

Recording before any labor, work, or materials begin sets the effective date of liens for later work at the recording date under Section 1311.13(A)(2), with priority over titles and encumbrances recorded afterward, and opens the twenty-one day window in which subcontractors and material suppliers serve a notice of furnishing on the designee and original contractor the notice names, under Section 1311.05(A). Recording is one of three steps the statute names: the owner also serves a copy on each original contractor and posts a copy on the property during the work.

The individual owner configuration

The form recites exactly one record owner, a natural person holding the whole fee and contracting in the owner's own right. The fixed recital states that no part owner, land contract vendee, or lessee contracts for the improvement and that the fee owner is the person named, which answers item (B)(4) for this configuration without a separate fee-owner entry. A landlord re-roofing a rental double and a sole owner of a commercial parcel contracting for site work present the pattern this notice recites. Two co-owners contracting together, an entity or trustee as owner, a lessee improving leased premises, an agent signing the affidavit for the owner, and a lender or contractor recording on the owner's behalf under Section 1311.04(N) present different patterns, and this form is not set up as any of them. The home construction contract carve-out in Section 1311.04(O) is a fact about the project that the guide describes.

Recording in an Ohio county

The notice is recorded with the county recorder of each county in which the property lies, at the ordinary fee under Section 317.32, a statewide base of $34 for the first two pages and $8 for each page after that before any county surcharge. The form is laid out to Section 317.114: a three inch blank band at the top of the first page, one and one-half inches at the top of later pages, one inch side and bottom margins, and twelve point type. The prepared-by block at the end carries the preparer's name and address, the item Section 1311.04(B)(11) lists and Section 317.111 requires at the conclusion of a recorded instrument. The notice of furnishing, the lien affidavit, and the affidavit of completion under Section 1311.04(T) are each prepared separately and are not included in this package.

The download contains the fillable notice of commencement, a completed example showing a Franklin County owner's entries from the legal description through the jurat, and a guide that walks through each section, the oath, and the recording, service, and posting steps. The guide and this description are general information about the form and the statute, not legal advice for any particular project.