Stop asking a Texas client for money and start costing them money

The invoice went in seven weeks ago. No complaint about the work, no punch list, no email saying it is short. Just a portal that still says under review and a phone that stopped being answered around the time the draw was supposed to land.

That silence feels like powerlessness. In Texas it is closer to the opposite. The person holding your money is sitting on a stack of statutory clocks, and as each one runs out, the cost of ignoring you climbs without you doing anything except counting. Interest starts. Your right to walk off the job without breaching the contract switches on. The owner can be made to hold money out of the general's next check with your name attached to it. At the end, your unpaid balance gets tied to the dirt the job sits on.

The rungs that put your name on somebody else's money are the time-limited ones, and Texas counts them to the 15th of a month rather than in days from your last site visit. A month you let slide is a month of your labor left unsecured, whatever you file afterwards.

So here is the ladder, cheapest rung first. Each rung costs you an hour or less, each one raises the price of the silence, and each one is worth doing properly, because the rung above will ask what you already tried.

Rung one: a statement of account with the interest line already on it

Change what is sitting in front of them. Not a chase. A statement.

One page: the invoice number, what it covered, the date they received it, the date it became due, the balance, then the line that does the work. Interest accrued to date, at 1.5 percent per month, under Tex. Prop. Code s.28.004.

That is not a late fee you made up and hope they honor. On a private job, s.28.002(a) gives the owner 35 days from the day they receive your written payment request. From the day after payment became due, s.28.004 accrues 1.5 percent a month, which is 18 percent a year, running until delivery, or until the mailing date if payment lands within three days, or until judgment.

Two things about that table change the tone of the next call. It is arithmetic, so there is nothing to negotiate about the rate. And it grows, so the cheapest item on their desk this month is a more expensive item on it by Christmas.

If the reply is a pay-when-paid clause or a 90 day term buried in the subcontract, s.28.006(a) makes an attempted waiver of Chapter 28 void. If the reply is that part of the work is disputed, s.28.003 caps what they may withhold at 100 percent of the difference between your figure and theirs, or 110 percent on a one to four family original contract. A $6,000 argument about tile does not buy them the other $78,000. That arithmetic, and the sentence you put it in, is in the 35 day clock.

Rung two: the ten day letter that puts your crew back in the truck

This rung costs one letter, and it is the only one on the ladder that lets you stop working without breaching the contract.

Under Tex. Prop. Code s.28.009(a), a contractor or subcontractor who has not been paid may give the owner written notice that payment has not been received and that you intend to suspend performance for nonpayment. On the 10th day after that notice, you may suspend. If there is a lender sign at the gate, s.28.009(b) brings the construction lender in too, so copy them.

Four things in the letter: the job, the unpaid amount and the date it came due, that payment has not been received, and your intent to suspend for nonpayment. Date it, send it the way you can prove, diary day ten.

Then read what suspension buys. Under s.28.009(c) you are not required to supply further labor, services or materials until you are paid the amount provided by the chapter plus your costs for demobilization and remobilization. Pulling a crew, a lift and a scaffold off a job and bringing them back is a real invoice, and the statute puts that money on the list of what clears before you restart.

The ten day gap is their window to do one of two things in writing: pay, or state a good faith dispute. Under s.28.009(c)(2), if they do neither before you suspend, the damages that follow are not yours. And under s.28.009(d) a dispute notice has to list specific reasons, so a vague complaint about quality does not clear the bar, and a specific one hands you a punch list you can close out and get paid on.

Two kinds of job hand you a different lever instead. On a detached single-family residence, duplex, triplex or quadruplex, s.28.009(e) points you at Chapter 53: the 35 days and the 1.5 percent keep running, and the lien on the title is the sharper instrument on a house anyway, because the owner is the one who has to clear it. On work for a governmental entity the calendar is Tex. Gov't Code Ch. 2251, and it is a faster one. The entity is overdue on the 31st day after the later of delivery, completed performance or receipt of the invoice under s.2251.021, and under s.2251.022 its vendor owes you your share of what it received by the 10th day after it gets paid.

Rung three: while the month is still live, make the owner hold the money

If you are a sub or a supplier there is a rung here a general contractor does not have, and it is the strongest cheap move in Texas.

Under Tex. Prop. Code s.53.056 you send one page to the owner and to the original contractor together, carrying the statutory warning text word for word, by the 15th day of the third month after the month you furnished the work on commercial jobs, or the second month on residential. Under s.53.003(e), when the 15th lands on a Saturday, Sunday or legal holiday you get the next day that is not one of those, which is a cushion to know about rather than a date to plan around.

Here is what that page does to the room. Once the notice lands, s.53.081 authorizes the owner to withhold from the general the amount needed to cover your claim, on top of funds already reserved. Under s.53.083 you demand payment out of those funds, and the original contractor then has 30 days to tell the owner in writing that your claim is disputed. Silence is treated as assent, and the owner is directed to pay you from the money they held. Under s.53.084, an owner who pays the general anyway after withholding was authorized carries that exposure themselves.

Read the sequence from the other side. The company that stopped returning your calls now has a 30 day clock that pays you when it runs out, and their own client is watching it. That is why this letter moves people who ignored three emails. The mechanics, the warning language and the proof of sending are in the monthly notice guide.

If what you are chasing is retainage rather than a progress draw, it is a shorter clock: s.53.057 gives you 30 days from the earlier of your own contract ending or the original contract being terminated or abandoned, and the 10 percent the owner is required to hold under s.53.101 is where the profit on a job usually lives. That is worked through in claiming the ten percent.

One more lever worth naming out loud. Construction payments in Texas are trust funds under Chapter 162 of the Property Code. A general who has been paid for your work and spent it elsewhere is not simply behind on invoices, and knowing that is often what ends the conversation.

Rung four: put it on the title

The affidavit is the rung people picture when they think about getting paid, and it sits fourth rather than first because it is the first one that goes on a public record, with a filing fee and a deadline you cannot re-run. The three rungs under it cost a letter each, and they leave the dated trail this one rests on.

Under s.53.052 you file with the county clerk in the county where the property sits, by the 15th day of the fourth month after the trigger month on commercial work, or the third month on residential. The trigger month follows the role you held on that contract: signed with the owner, it is the month the original contract was completed, terminated or abandoned; signed with anybody else, it is the month you last furnished labor or materials. Section 53.055 then gives you five days after filing to get a copy to the owner, and to the original contractor too if that is not you.

Then the outside date. Under s.53.158 you have one year from the last day you could have filed the affidavit to bring suit to foreclose it, on every project type since House Bill 2237, extendable to two years by written agreement with the owner recorded before it expires.

The role test, the deadline table and a worked example are in the lien deadline guide. For your own dates rather than the example ones, feed your furnishing months and project type into the Texas lien deadline calculator.

A homestead job is its own path, decided at the kitchen table

If the improvement is to a Texas homestead, the paperwork that creates your lien rights happens before the first nail rather than after the last invoice. Under s.53.254 you need a written contract executed before any labor or material is furnished, signed by both spouses if the owner is married, and filed with the county clerk in the county where the homestead sits. The affidavit you eventually file carries a conspicuous 10 point boldface notice reading THIS IS NOT A LIEN. THIS IS ONLY AN AFFIDAVIT CLAIMING A LIEN.

Build that into your residential contract pack. It is an afternoon at the front of a job you were doing anyway, and it decides how much leverage you hold in month five. A remodeler who turned up on day one with a signed, filed homestead contract works rungs one through four like anybody else. Without it you are on rungs one and five, which is why the interest statement carries more weight on houses, not less.

Rung five: suit, and the clause that decides who pays for it

By here you are choosing, and the size of the balance decides. Texas justice courts hear civil matters up to $20,000, exclusive of interest, under Tex. Gov't Code s.27.031. A $12,000 balance fits inside that ceiling. A $46,000 or $84,000 one does not. Above it, or where the lien is the point, it is district court and a foreclosure suit inside the one year in s.53.158.

The clause that changes the math is s.28.005: a person may bring an action to enforce a right under Chapter 28, and the court may award costs and reasonable attorney's fees. That is why a $20,000 Texas nonpayment file gets taken on terms a plain debt of the same size would not, and it is why the statement of account at rung one is worth writing carefully. Every rung you worked, dated and sent is an exhibit by the time you get here.

The order, on one calendar

Every date there comes off two facts you already have: the day they received the payment request, and the month you were on site. Get both onto the job file the week you demobilize and the ladder runs itself.

There is no monthly subscription for any of this. The AEC Stack platform fee is 2.5 percent of each invoice processed, collected on payment due dates, so an invoice that never gets paid does not carry a fee.

Start with the arithmetic, because it is free and it takes four minutes. Put your unpaid months into the Texas lien deadline calculator and see which notice dates are still open. Then send the month that is still live, using the monthly notice guide, and set the next job up so the 35 days starts cleanly from your dashboard.