Ohio Notice of Furnishing

Of the construction notices Ohio's mechanics' lien chapter calls for, the notice of furnishing is the one that never reaches the county recorder. A subcontractor or material supplier serves it on the owner's designee and on the original contractor named in the owner's recorded commencement notice, and Ohio Revised Code Section 1311.05 gives that service twenty-one days from the first day of labor or materials to preserve lien rights back to that first day. This Ohio Construction Notice (Notice of Furnishing) prepares the notice in the form Section 1311.05(B) prints, for one lien claimant signing through a named party.

Twenty-one days, measured from the first delivery

Section 1311.05(A) requires the notice where any person has recorded a commencement notice under Section 1311.04 for the improvement, and it fixes the window: any time after that recording, but within twenty-one days after the claimant first performs labor or work or first furnishes materials. Division (D) states what the window buys. A notice served inside it preserves lien rights for everything owing from the first day forward; a notice served late preserves rights only for the twenty-one days immediately before service and afterward, and nothing earlier is revived. Section 1311.19(B) adds a rule written for this notice alone: service by certified mail is complete on the date of mailing, and a notice sent to the address in the commencement notice that comes back unclaimed or refused is complete when first attempted.

Served, never recorded

The notice goes to people, not to an index. Section 1311.19(A) lists the means of service: the sheriff, certified or registered mail, overnight delivery, hand delivery, any other method that produces written evidence of receipt, or service on a corporation's statutory agent. Because nothing is recorded, no recording fee, auditor stamp, or recorder format rule attaches, and Section 1311.05(F) provides that the notice is not a written notice of a lien or encumbrance under Section 5301.232 even if a copy reaches the mortgage lender.

The statute wrote the form

Section 1311.05(B) says the notice shall be in substantially the form it prints, and this form follows that text: two addressee blocks for the designee or owner and the original contractor, copied from the recorded commencement notice; the operative sentence giving notice that the undersigned is performing labor or work or furnishing materials to a named other contracting party in connection with the improvement at a stated location; the sentence fixing the date furnishing began or will begin; and the WARNING TO OWNER paragraph, verbatim in bold capitals. Under Section 1311.05(C) the location entry is sufficient when it reasonably identifies the property.

One claimant, one By line, no notary

The form recites one lien claimant, a subcontractor or material supplier as Section 1311.01 defines those terms, identified by name and address, and closes with the statutory By line: the signature of a party signing for the lien claimant, with that party's printed name, capacity, and address, and the date. The statutory form prints no notary certificate and Section 1311.05 requires none, so the form carries one signature block and no acknowledgment or jurat. An electrical supplier delivering to a mechanical subcontractor on a commercial build, and a drywall subcontractor under a general contractor's contract with a developer, present the pattern this notice recites: a claimant one tier or more below the original contractor. The form is not set up as the owner's recorded commencement notice, as the affidavit for mechanics' lien recorded under Section 1311.06, as a notice for a public improvement, which its own scope line excludes, or as a notice on a home construction contract within Section 1311.011, to which Section 1311.05 does not apply.

What comes after

The notice preserves a right; it does not exercise one. The lien itself arises through the affidavit for mechanics' lien under Section 1311.06, recorded within sixty days after the last labor or materials on a one- or two-family dwelling and seventy-five days on most other private work, then served on the owner under Section 1311.07; that affidavit is prepared and recorded separately and is not included in this package.

The download contains the fillable notice of furnishing, a completed example showing a Franklin County electrical supplier's notice from the addressee blocks through the signature, and a guide that walks through each entry, the twenty-one day period, and the methods and timing of service under Section 1311.19. This description and the guide are general information about the form and the statute; neither is legal advice for a particular project.