Alaska Lien Waiver & Release — AS 34.35.117 Says the Waiver Requires No Consideration, and That Is the Whole Problem (2026)
✓ Verified against Alaska statutes · Reviewed September 2026 · By Michael Evan — Founder · 50 states · 799 rules
Alaska mechanics lien deadlines at a glance
Preliminary Notice
Post at site — Notice of Right to Lien
Mechanics Lien
120 days — From last date of furnishing
Enforcement
6 months — From filing
Manage your Alaska deadlines and projects — your first project is on us → · All Alaska deadlines & forms
Alaska Legislated Away the Argument Every Unpaid Claimant Makes
A lien waiver and release is the document a contractor, subcontractor, or supplier signs to give up lien rights, ordinarily in exchange for a payment. The phrase doing the work in that sentence is in exchange for . A waiver is a contract, contracts need consideration, and when the money never arrives an unpaid claimant's first and best argument in most states is that the consideration failed. That argument is why Utah voids a waiver when the check bounces and why Mississippi gives a sixty-day affidavit window before a waiver hardens. Alaska took the argument off the table. AS 34.35.117(a) provides that a written waiver of lien or stop-lending notice of rights created under AS 34.35.050 through 34.35.120 signed by a claimant requires no consideration and is valid and binding . That is not a court weighing the equities of a particular deal. It is the legislature answering the question in advance, in the claimant's statute, against the claimant. An Alaska contractor who signs a waiver and is then never paid does not get to argue the waiver failed for want of payment. The practical translation is short. In Alaska, the signature is the event, not the payment . Every control a claimant has must sit before the pen touches the page, because nothing meaningful sits behind it. The recording and enforcement windows that the waiver is releasing are tracked on our mechanics lien…
What AS 34.35.117 Actually Regulates — and What It Leaves Blank
Alaska's waiver statute is two subsections long and it regulates effect , never appearance . There is no template, no required caption, no prescribed language, no notarization, and no recording requirement. A claimant looking for the Alaska waiver form will not find one, because the legislature never wrote it. That combination is unusual and it is worth sitting with. In a statutory-form state the legislature drafted the document, so a claimant handed a form that departs from the statute has something to push against. Alaska hands the claimant a rule that the document binds, and then declines to say anything about what the document should contain. The drafting party sets the terms, and the drafting party is upstream of the claimant essentially every time.
The Forward-Reach Limit — Real, but Pointed the Wrong Way for Most Claimants
AS 34.35.117(a) does not end with the no-consideration rule. It closes with a limit: a waiver permitted under the section may not relate to labor, materials, services, or equipment furnished after the date the waiver is signed by the claimant . That sentence is a genuine protection and it does real work. A blanket no-lien clause signed at contract execution, purporting to release lien rights across an entire job that has not been built yet, is asking the waiver to reach forward past its own signing date — which is precisely what the statute forbids. The trouble is the direction. The limit protects tomorrow's work. It says nothing whatsoever about work already furnished as of the signature, and work already furnished is what every monthly progress waiver in the country actually covers. Run the ordinary sequence against it: the general contractor circulates waivers with the pay application, collects them executed, then releases checks once the owner funds the draw. The signature lands before the money on work already in the ground. In Connecticut that release is void by operation of law under Conn. Gen. Stat. § 42-158l . In Kentucky , KRS 371.405 voids the no-lien clause on covered work. In Alaska the statute has already said the waiver binds without consideration. The Fix Costs One Sentence Because Alaska supplies no statutory rescue, the conditioning language has to live…
Who Cannot Waive: AS 34.35.117(b) and the AS 34.35.120(10) Individual
Alaska's second limit is a person, not a date. AS 34.35.117(b) provides that an individual described in AS 34.35.120(10) may not waive the right to claim a lien under AS 34.35.050 through 34.35.120, and that a waiver purporting to waive the lien rights of that individual or class of individuals is void . AS 34.35.120(10) defines an individual as a natural person who actually performs labor upon a building or other improvement as an employee of the owner or any contractor . So the protected class is the working person on the job. It is keyed to performing labor as an employee — not to being small, not to being unsophisticated, and not to being a subcontractor. A subcontracting entity is not an individual under this definition, and its own waiver binds it. The clause matters most to whoever is collecting waivers. Upstream forms routinely recite that the claimant waives on behalf of itself and all persons furnishing labor, materials, or services through it. In Alaska that recital is void as to the claimant's employees, because the claimant never had the power to sign their rights away. A general contractor, owner, or lender treating a stack of subcontractor waivers as proof the property is clear of every claim below has not accounted for where the stack stops. When an unfamiliar release clause turns up in an Alaska subcontract, that is the moment to have counsel read it…
The Lien Rights the Waiver Is Releasing
A waiver is only worth arguing about while there is still a lien right to release, and Alaska lets the owner compress that window. AS 34.35.068 gives 120 days after the claimant ceases to furnish labor, materials, services, or equipment to record a claim of lien where no notice of completion is recorded. If the owner records a notice of completion under AS 34.35.071 , a 15-day window can apply instead — and whether it reaches a particular claimant turns on whether that claimant gave a notice of right to lien and whether it received advance notification of the recording. Fifteen days is not enough time to discover an owner's filing, reconcile a disputed balance, and get a claim of lien recorded from a standing start. Alaska requires no preliminary notice to preserve the lien, which is why the optional AS 34.35.064 notice of right to lien is under-used — it costs almost nothing and it is the cheapest available hedge against that compression. See the preliminary notice hub for how Alaska's optional notice compares to mandatory-notice states, and Alaska lien statutes for the underlying text.
Generating and Tracking Alaska Waivers
Because AS 34.35.117 supplies no form and no payment-failure rescue, the Mechanics Lien Management Method treats an Alaska waiver as a drafting-and-sequence problem rather than a compliance one: the conditioning language sits in the operative sentence, the payment is identified by amount and reference, the release is scoped to a stated pay period so it cannot quietly sweep in unbilled work, and the waiver is not released until the funds have cleared. Alaska Waiver & Notice Generator Produce a conditional Alaska waiver scoped to an identified payment and pay period, plus the AS 34.35.064 notice of right to lien, from a single project record — with the AS 34.35.068 recording window and the AS 34.35.072 six-month enforcement date calendared from the last-furnishing date. Pair it with the property search tool to confirm the record owner before any notice goes out, and with the lien waiver hub to see where Alaska sits against the statutory-form states. Today's companion guide covers a state that regulates the waiver form no more than Alaska does but writes the owner's waiver-demand script into its own statute — the Arkansas lien waiver guide .
Generate the Right Alaska Documents in Minutes
The Mechanics Lien Management lien generator produces a conditional Alaska waiver and the AS 34.35.064 notice of right to lien from one project record, and the Mechanics Lien Management deadline calculator tracks the AS 34.35.068 recording window from the last-furnishing date. Miss the deadline and you lose your lien rights entirely.
Frequently Asked Questions
Does Alaska have a statutory lien waiver form?
No. Alaska prescribes no waiver template, no required language, no notarization, and no recording requirement. AS 34.35.117 regulates the effect of a waiver, not its appearance — it tells you that a written waiver signed by a claimant is valid and binding, and it tells you two things a waiver cannot do, but it supplies no form to sign. Everything else is private drafting. That is a meaningful difference from statutory-form states like California, Texas, or Wyoming, where the legislature wrote the document and a form that departs from it can be attacked. In Alaska there is nothing to depart from, so the document is read on its own text and the drafting party sets the terms.
Does an Alaska lien waiver require payment to be binding?
No, and this is the single most important sentence in Alaska's waiver law. AS 34.35.117(a) provides that a written waiver of lien or stop-lending notice of rights created under AS 34.35.050 through 34.35.120 signed by a claimant requires no consideration and is valid and binding. Consideration is the thing a contract normally needs in order to be enforceable, and in a waiver dispute it is usually the payment. Alaska removed it as a requirement by statute. A contractor who signs an Alaska waiver and is then never paid cannot argue the waiver failed for want of consideration, because the legislature has already answered that question against them.
Can lien rights be waived in advance in Alaska?
Not for future work. AS 34.35.117(a) closes with a limit: a waiver permitted under the section may not relate to labor, materials, services, or equipment furnished after the date the waiver is signed by the claimant. A blanket no-lien clause signed at contract execution, purporting to release lien rights across the whole job, is asking the waiver to reach forward past its own signing date, which is exactly what the statute says it cannot do. That protects tomorrow's work. It does nothing for work already furnished as of the signature, which is where most Alaska waiver losses actually occur — the waiver signed at the September draw covers everything through September, paid or not.
Who cannot waive lien rights in Alaska?
AS 34.35.117(b) provides that an individual described in AS 34.35.120(10) may not waive the right to claim a lien, and that a waiver purporting to waive the lien rights of that individual or class of individuals is void. AS 34.35.120(10) defines an individual as a natural person who actually performs labor upon a building or other improvement as an employee of the owner or any contractor. So the protection runs to the working person on the job, not to the company. A general contractor cannot sign a waiver that disposes of its own crew's lien rights, and a form drafted to sweep in every person furnishing labor through the claimant is void as to those employees.
Does an Alaska lien waiver have to be notarized?
No. Alaska imposes no notarization requirement on a lien waiver. AS 34.35.117 requires only that the waiver be written and signed by the claimant. A party may still ask for an acknowledgment as a matter of practice, and there is an argument for doing it voluntarily on large releases, because states that do require notarization — Wyoming and Mississippi — get an incidental benefit from it: the trip to the notary puts a deliberate pause between the demand for a waiver and the release of the claim. Alaska supplies no such pause, so a waiver can be signed on a clipboard at the job trailer and it binds.
What happens to an Alaska lien waiver if the check bounces?
Nothing happens automatically, and Alaska is the furthest-out state in the country on this point. Utah Code § 38-1a-802(3) voids a waiver outright if payment was by check and the check fails to clear. Mississippi gives a claimant a sixty-day Affidavit of Nonpayment window before a waiver hardens. Wyoming at least writes the uncertified-funds problem into its statutory form so the claimant sees it. Alaska does none of that, and AS 34.35.117(a) goes the other direction by making consideration unnecessary in the first place. The protection has to be drafted into the document: make the release expressly conditional on actual receipt and clearance of the identified payment.
How long does an Alaska contractor have to record a claim of lien?
Under AS 34.35.068, if the owner does not record a notice of completion, a claim of lien must be recorded not later than 120 days after the claimant ceases to furnish labor, materials, services, or equipment. If the owner records a notice of completion under AS 34.35.071, a much shorter 15-day window can apply, and which claimants it applies to turns on whether a notice of right to lien was given and whether the claimant received advance notification of the recording. A copy of the recorded lien is served on the owner within 15 days of recording, and suit to enforce runs within six months of recording under AS 34.35.072.