They stopped paying: the five rungs, in order, with the California date on each one

You have been polite for eleven weeks. The work is finished, the invoice is real, and the last three calls went to voicemail. At this point most contractors do one of two things, and both of them lose money: keep calling, or jump straight to threatening a lawsuit they have no intention of filing.

There is a ladder, it has five rungs, and each rung has a date fixed by the California code. Worked in order, most files get paid somewhere around rung two or three, long before anyone drafts a complaint. Worked out of order, or worked slowly, the rungs expire from the bottom up and you end up on the only one that costs real money.

This page is the five rungs, the deadline and the section on each, a full escalation with real dates on it, and the one thing to check before you climb at all.

Rung zero: check your own file first

Two minutes here saves the whole exercise.

Was your license active for the entire job? California is unusually blunt about this. An unlicensed contractor cannot sue for compensation (BPC s.7031(a)), and a hirer can claw back everything already paid to one (BPC s.7031(b)). Workers compensation is the usual way this bites people who thought they were fine, because a lapse in cover suspends the license by operation of law on the day the cover lapses, with no warning and no grace period. If there is a gap in your job, deal with that before you send anything, and the California licensing guide covers where the line sits.

Was a preliminary notice served? Within 20 days of first furnishing (Civ. Code s.8204) is the rule, and it is the paperwork that makes rungs three and four available. Served late it still protects the 20 days before service and everything after, which means the right move on a notice you never sent is to serve it today rather than write it off. The 20 day preliminary notice guide has the mechanics.

If the job is a residential remodel, pull the contract too. The home improvement rules require a written contract above $500, cap the down payment at the lesser of $1,000 or 10 percent of the contract price, prohibit payments running ahead of the value delivered, and require change orders to be written and signed before the extra work starts. If the unpaid amount is extras that were never signed, that is the fight you are actually in, and the California home improvement contract guide is where to start.

Rung one: the dated demand

Not a reminder. A demand with a date and a section number in it.

Most late payment emails are indistinguishable from the other forty in the accounts payable inbox, because they all say the same thing: following up, please advise, let me know. The one that gets actioned says when the money was due and what rule made it due then.

On private work the owner pays the direct contractor within 30 days (Civ. Code s.8800), and a prime who receives that progress payment pays each subcontractor within 7 days of receiving it (BPC s.7108.5). Retention on private work is released by the owner within 45 days after completion (Civ. Code s.8812) and passed down within 10 days of receipt (Civ. Code s.8814).

Write four lines. The invoice number and amount. The date it became due and the section that says so. If part of it is genuinely disputed, name that part and the amount. Then one question with a date attached: when is the undisputed balance being released.

That last part matters more than the tone. Where there is a good-faith dispute, the amount that can be withheld is capped at 150 percent of the disputed amount (BPC s.7108.5). If they are arguing about $6,000 and holding $40,000, then $31,000 of that is outside the statute and you can say so with a multiplication sign rather than an adjective. The clocks themselves are laid out in the California payment deadlines guide.

Send it, save it, and diary the next rung for ten days out. A dated demand sitting in the file makes every rung above it easier.

Rung two: work the clock, not the person

If the demand goes unanswered, the next move is not a bigger demand. It is finding out where the money actually stopped, because that changes who you are talking to.

Ask one question upstairs: has the owner paid for the billing period in question? A prime who has been paid and is holding your share is outside BPC s.7108.5 and knows it. A prime who has not been paid is on your side of the problem, and the pressure belongs one link up, on the owner's 30 days under Civ. Code s.8800.

This is also where you find out which kind of file you have. Some are cash flow, which resolves. Some are a dispute nobody has told you about, which resolves once it is on the table. And some are avoidance, which does not resolve at all and is the only kind where climbing fast actually matters. The tell is silence rather than argument. People who intend to pay you eventually will argue with you.

Whichever it is, keep counting days. The rungs above this one have deadlines that do not come back, and rung two is where most contractors spend three months they did not have.

Rung three: the stop payment notice

This is the rung most contractors have never used and it is frequently the one that works, because it does not attach to real estate and it does not wait for a court. It reaches the money before it leaves.

A stop payment notice tells the owner, or the construction lender, to hold funds that have not yet been paid out. That is a different mechanism from a lien, and on a live job with money still to come it is faster and more uncomfortable for the party stalling you, because it interferes with the next draw rather than with a sale years away.

On private work the stop payment notice runs on the lien clock (Civ. Code Part 6), so the dates in the next section govern it. On public work it has its own deadline (Civ. Code Part 6 ch. 5). Public work also carries a payment bond on jobs over $25,000 (Civ. Code s.9550), and a claim against a surety is a claim against a company whose business is paying claims. Suit on that bond runs six months (Civ. Code s.9558).

Which instrument fits which file, and how to serve one so it actually holds funds, is in the stop payment notice guide.

Rung four: record the lien

The lien is the rung with the hardest dates on it, and they run from completion of the work of improvement rather than from your last invoice or your last phone call.

A Notice of Completion is recorded within 15 days of completion (Civ. Code Part 6), and whether one gets recorded is not your decision. That is why checking the county recorder in the weeks after you finish is a habit rather than a research task: it is the single variable that can cut your window from 90 days to 30.

One more requirement, and it is the one that voids otherwise good liens. The Notice of Mechanics Lien has to be served with the claim, and failure to serve it makes the lien unenforceable as a matter of law (Civ. Code s.8416). That is a five minute step at the end of a three month sequence, which is exactly why it gets dropped. Do it the day you record, while the stamped copy is still in your hand.

The California lien deadline guide has the full table, and the California lien deadline calculator counts every version from a completion date, free and with no signup.

A recorded lien is also where a large share of these files end. It appears on title searches, it stops a sale, it snags a refinance, and it produces returned calls from people who were not returning them. Plenty of unpaid invoices in California get paid in the two weeks after a lien is recorded, by people who spent three months not answering emails.

Rung five: the foreclosure suit, and the 90 days that runs it

A recorded lien is not permanent. You have 90 days from recording the lien to bring suit to foreclose (Civ. Code s.8460). Miss it and the lien is spent, no matter how good the claim underneath it was.

Ninety days is enough time to negotiate and not enough time to drift. Diary it on the day you record, at 60 days rather than 85, because the decision to file needs a couple of weeks in front of it. This is also the point where a California construction attorney belongs in the file, and the version of you that arrives with clean dates, a served preliminary notice, a served Notice of Mechanics Lien and a dated demand chain is a dramatically cheaper client than the version that arrives with a shoebox.

One file, all five rungs, with real dates

A residential remodel in Riverside. First furnishing 20 January 2026, preliminary notice served 3 February 2026 (Civ. Code s.8204). Last day on site and completion 10 April 2026. Final invoice 13 April 2026. Then it goes quiet.

Look at what the recorder check did. Without the Notice of Completion the lien date would have been 9 July 2026, 90 days after completion. With it recorded on 22 April the real date was 21 June, eighteen days earlier, and a contractor who assumed 90 days would have discovered that in July.

Look at the order too. The demand went out five days after the money became legally late, not eleven weeks after. The lien went in nine days before the window closed, not on the last afternoon. Nothing here was fast. It was just counted.

The part that is actually in your control

Every date on this page is knowable the week you finish the job. There is no reminder, no letter from the county and no interest accruing quietly in your favor while you wait. The rungs simply expire, from the bottom up, in silence.

That sounds harsh until you see the other side of it: the contractor who wrote down a completion date and checked the recorder once is holding a calendar the person avoiding their calls does not have. That is the whole gap on this subject. It is not legal skill and it is not aggression. It is a job file with a completion date in it and a demand letter that names a section.

If the money is retention rather than a progress billing, the clocks are different and they can close earlier than you expect, which is covered in the California retention guide.

On AEC Stack there is no monthly subscription. The platform fee is 2.5 percent of each invoice processed through the platform, so the invoice, the payment date and the clock running between them live in the same record instead of three places.

Take the worst file you have, write down its completion date, and run it through the California lien deadline calculator before you send another follow up. Then open a working demo business file and get the rest of your open jobs dated, so the next one that goes quiet starts at rung one instead of rung four.