Oregon Lien Waiver & Release — Oregon Never Says You May Not Waive; Twice It Says You Must (ORS 87.025) (2026)
✓ Verified against Oregon statutes · Reviewed September 2026 · By Michael Evan — Founder · 50 states · 799 rules
Oregon mechanics lien deadlines at a glance
Preliminary Notice
8 days (res) — Info Notice to Owner
Mechanics Lien
75 days — From completion
Enforcement
120 days — From filing
Manage your Oregon deadlines and projects — your first project is on us → · All Oregon deadlines & forms
The Statute Never Prohibits a Waiver — It Orders One
A lien waiver and release is the document a contractor, subcontractor, or supplier signs to give up the right to claim a lien on the improved property, ordinarily in exchange for money. Almost every state that touches the subject touches it defensively. It writes a form the parties must use, or it declares that a waiver signed before payment is void, or it says a release only takes effect to the extent money was actually received. The legislative instinct is to protect the party holding the pen. Oregon does not do any of that. Chapter 87 contains no statutory waiver template, no statutory conditional-versus-unconditional distinction, no notarization requirement, and no provision voiding a waiver of lien rights demanded in a construction contract. A waiver clause written into an Oregon subcontract before the first day of work is a term of the bargain, and it will be read as one. The interesting part is what chapter 87 says instead. In the one place where the legislature did write the word into the statute, it wrote it as a command to sign, not a prohibition on signing. ORS 87.025(5): upon payment and acceptance of the amount due to the supplier of materials or supplies, and upon demand of the person making payment, the supplier shall execute a waiver of all lien rights as to materials or supplies for which payment has been made. And one subsection earlier, in ORS 87.025(4), Oregon uses waiver as a penalty: a supplier that fails to answer a mortgagee's demand within 15 days waives its priority.
The Compelled Waiver: What ORS 87.025(5) Actually Requires
Read the sentence slowly, because both sides of the average Oregon dispute quote half of it. The duty arises upon payment and acceptance of the amount due — not upon a promise to pay, not upon a check in transit, and not upon issuance of a pay application. It arises upon demand of the person making payment, which means it is not automatic and a payer that never asks never triggers it. It runs to a supplier of materials or supplies. And the waiver it compels covers materials or supplies for which payment has been made. That last limit is the one worth defending. A payer holding ORS 87.025(5) in one hand and a blanket release form in the other is asking for a document broader than the statute compels. Retainage that has not been released is not something payment has been made for. A pending change order is not something payment has been made for. Materials delivered on the next application are not either. The supplier is obligated to release what the money covered, and the statute is the argument for keeping the release that narrow. The compelled waiver also runs forward rather than backward: it gives a payer no right to a signed release before payment and acceptance, which makes it a useful answer when a waiver is demanded as a precondition to funding, because the statute the payer is relying on describes the opposite sequence. Compare South Carolina, which reaches the same practical result from the other direction — S.C. Code section 29-7-20 makes an agreement to waive the right to file or claim a lien for labor and materials against public policy and unenforceable unless payment substantially equal to the amount waived is actually made.
The Waiver Nobody Signs: Losing Priority Under ORS 87.025(4)
Oregon's second statutory waiver costs a supplier the most valuable thing the lien has, and it happens through inaction. A perfected Oregon lien is preferred to any lien, mortgage, or other encumbrance that attached to the land after — or was unrecorded at — the time of commencement of the improvement. For a supplier of materials or supplies to hold that preference against a mortgage recorded before the materials went in, ORS 87.025(3) requires notice to the mortgagee not later than eight days, not including Saturdays, Sundays and other holidays, after the date the materials were delivered. Having received that notice, the mortgagee is entitled to test it. Under subsection (4), the mortgagee may demand a list of the materials or supplies together with a statement of the amount due, and failure to furnish the list within 15 days constitutes a waiver of the preference. No signature, no negotiation, no consideration. A demand letter goes unanswered for sixteen days and the supplier is behind the construction loan. On most distressed Oregon projects the mortgage is the whole story — the lender is the only party still solvent and the equity behind the loan is thin. A lien that sits junior to the recorded mortgage is frequently a lien that collects nothing.
How Oregon Applies, Scenario by Scenario
A no-lien or advance waiver clause written into an Oregon subcontract is not voided by chapter 87, which enacts no anti-waiver provision and does not condition a waiver on payment. An unconditional release handed over before the check clears is binding as written, because Oregon writes no bounced-check rule and no effectiveness-on-payment provision. A supplier of materials paid in full must sign a waiver when the payer demands one, under ORS 87.025(5). A mortgagee that demands the supplier's list of materials and amount due must be answered within 15 days or the priority preference is waived under ORS 87.025(4). A supplier that delivers materials but misses the eight-business-day mortgagee notice under ORS 87.025(3) holds no priority over the recorded mortgage. On a residential sale of $50,000 or more with recent construction, written waivers from claimants exceeding $5,000 in the aggregate are one of five statutory exits under ORS 87.007, alongside title insurance, a 25 percent escrow, a bond or letter of credit, and closing after the lien deadline. A seller that uses none of the five faces an action for up to twice actual damages. And a waiver argument still running as the 75-day window closes does not preserve the right to perfect under ORS 87.035.
ORS 87.007: Waivers as the Cheap Way to Close a Residential Sale
Oregon has one more place where waivers do statutory work, and it explains a request that arrives out of nowhere on residential jobs — a title company or a seller asking a claimant to sign a release days before a closing. ORS 87.007 obligates a seller of residential property to protect the purchaser from claims of lien that arise before the date the sale is complete, where the sale price is $50,000 or more for original construction or where improvement costs reach that threshold within three months before the sale. The seller may satisfy it by providing title insurance on the purchaser's behalf without construction lien exceptions; by retaining not less than 25 percent of the sale price in escrow; by maintaining a bond or letter of credit in that amount; by obtaining written waivers from every person claiming or perfecting a lien whose claims exceed $5,000 in the aggregate; or by completing the sale after the deadline for perfecting a lien has passed. Four of those five cost the seller money or time. The fifth costs the seller a phone call. That asymmetry is the whole negotiation: a claimant asked to sign at a closing is being handed the least expensive of the seller's five options, and a signature that unlocks a transaction is worth more than the same signature two weeks earlier on an ordinary draw. The section has teeth for the buyer as well. A purchaser may bring an action to recover up to twice the amount of actual damages caused by a violation, subject to the statute's two-year filing limit, with attorney fees available.
The Oregon Calendar: 8 Business Days, 75 Days, 120 Days, 10 Days
The notice of right to a lien. Under ORS 87.021, a person furnishing materials, equipment, services or labor for which a lien may be claimed gives the owner of the site a notice of right to a lien. Its defining feature is retroactive reach rather than a due date: the notice only protects the right to perfect a lien for materials, equipment and labor or services provided after a date which is eight days, not including Saturdays, Sundays and other holidays, before the notice is delivered or mailed. Delay does not forfeit the claim in one stroke — it erodes it a day at a time. Subsection (3) removes the requirement for work on a commercial improvement, defined as any structure or building not used or intended to be used as a residential building, where a residential building is one that is or will be occupied by the owner as a residence and contains not more than four units. Perfection in 75 days. ORS 87.035 requires a claim of lien to be perfected not later than 75 days after the person has ceased to provide labor, rent equipment, or furnish materials, or 75 days after completion of construction, whichever is earlier. Read the last four words. On a job that finishes while a claimant is still doing punch-list work, completion can pull the deadline in ahead of the claimant's own last day on site. Suit in 120 days. Under ORS 87.055, no lien created under ORS 87.010 binds any improvement for longer than 120 days after the claim of lien is filed unless suit is brought within that period. Ten days' notice before suit. ORS 87.057 requires written notice of intent to foreclose delivered to the owner and to the mortgagee not later than 10 days prior to commencement of the suit. That notice sits inside the 120-day window rather than beside it, so a claimant who waits until day 118 to think about foreclosure has already run out of room. And under ORS 87.060 the court shall allow a reasonable amount as attorney fees at trial and on appeal to the party who prevails on the issues of the validity and foreclosure of the lien — which cuts against a claimant that forecloses on a claim it had already released.
Prompt Payment and Retainage: Rights a Release Does Not Touch
A lien waiver releases a claim against the property. It does not release the contract, and Oregon's payment statutes live in ORS chapter 701, entirely outside the lien chapter. ORS 701.630 supplies the pay-down engine: an original contractor, subcontractor, or material supplier that performs in accordance with a construction contract is entitled to payment from the party with whom it contracts, and where an original contractor receives payment from the owner for a subcontractor's work, it must pay that subcontractor no later than seven days after receiving the payment. A progress or final payment delayed more than seven days carries interest beginning on the eighth day at one and one-half percent a month or a fraction of a month on the unpaid balance, or at a higher rate the parties agreed to. ORS 701.420 handles the money held back: an owner, contractor, or subcontractor may withhold as retainage not more than five percent of the contract price of the work completed, and interest at one percent per month runs on the final payment due a contractor or subcontractor, commencing 30 days after the work has been completed and accepted, except as provided in ORS 701.430.
Generating and Tracking Oregon Waivers
In a state that supplies no form, the quality of the paperwork is the protection. The Mechanics Lien Management Method builds every Oregon release around an identified payment — amount, application number, through-date — conditions effectiveness on receipt and final clearance of those funds, limits scope to work through the stated date instead of leaving forward-looking language in place, and carves out retainage, stored materials, pending change orders, and bond claims by name. The Mechanics Lien Management State System runs the Oregon calendar alongside it: the eight-business-day reach of the notice of right to a lien, the eight-business-day mortgagee notice for suppliers, the 15-day response window on a mortgagee's demand for a materials list, the 75-day perfection deadline measured against the earlier of last furnishing or completion, the 120-day suit window, and the 10-day notice of intent to foreclose that has to fit inside it.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is there a required lien waiver form in Oregon?
No. Oregon prescribes no statutory waiver template, draws no statutory line between conditional and unconditional releases, and imposes no notarization requirement. Parties use their own forms, and the words they chose decide what was released. That places the entire burden of protection on drafting. Every safeguard a statutory-form state supplies by default — the identified payment, the through-date, the condition that the release takes effect only when funds clear, the carve-outs for retainage and change orders — has to be typed into the Oregon document by the party signing it.
Can Oregon lien rights be waived in the contract before work begins?
Oregon chapter 87 contains no provision voiding a waiver of construction lien rights demanded in a construction contract, and no rule making a waiver ineffective until payment is received. That is the opposite of South Carolina, where S.C. Code section 29-7-20 makes an agreement to waive the right to file or claim a lien unenforceable as against public policy unless payment substantially equal to the amount waived is actually made. An Oregon subcontractor reviewing a proposed subcontract should therefore read the lien and waiver language as a live commercial term to negotiate, not as boilerplate the legislature will neutralize later.
Does Oregon law ever require a contractor or supplier to sign a lien waiver?
Yes, and it is one of the few places in American lien law where a waiver is compelled rather than restricted. ORS 87.025(5) provides that upon payment and acceptance of the amount due to the supplier of materials or supplies, and upon demand of the person making payment, the supplier shall execute a waiver of all lien rights as to materials or supplies for which payment has been made. Read the limits inside it: the duty is triggered by payment and acceptance, it runs to a supplier of materials or supplies, and it reaches only the materials or supplies that were actually paid for.
How can an Oregon supplier lose lien priority without signing anything?
By not answering the mail. Under ORS 87.025(3) a supplier of materials or supplies must deliver notice to the mortgagee not later than eight days, not including Saturdays, Sundays and other holidays, after the date materials were delivered, in order to claim priority over a recorded mortgage. Subsection (4) then lets the mortgagee who received that notice demand a list of the materials or supplies together with a statement of the amount due, and failure to furnish the list within 15 days constitutes a waiver of the preference. The lien survives; the priority that made it worth having does not.
Why do Oregon residential sellers collect lien waivers before closing?
Because ORS 87.007 makes it one of the statutory ways to close safely. On a sale of residential property where the price is $50,000 or more for original construction, or where improvement costs reach that threshold within three months before the sale, the seller must protect the purchaser from liens arising before the sale is complete. The listed methods include providing title insurance without construction lien exceptions, retaining not less than 25 percent of the sale price in escrow, maintaining a bond or letter of credit in that amount, obtaining written waivers from every person claiming or perfecting a lien whose claims exceed $5,000 in the aggregate, or completing the sale after the deadline for perfecting a lien has passed.
What are the Oregon construction lien deadlines?
Three, and they run short. A claim of lien must be perfected not later than 75 days after the person ceased to provide labor, rent equipment, or furnish materials, or 75 days after completion of construction, whichever is earlier, under ORS 87.035. The lien then binds the improvement for no longer than 120 days after the claim of lien is filed unless suit is brought within that period under ORS 87.055. And under ORS 87.057 a claimant must deliver written notice of intent to foreclose to the owner and mortgagee not later than 10 days before commencing the suit. A waiver dispute does not pause any of the three.
What payment rights survive an Oregon lien waiver?
The statutory payment clocks in ORS chapter 701, which operate on the contract rather than the property. Under ORS 701.630 a contractor that receives payment from the owner for a subcontractor's work must pay that subcontractor no later than seven days after receiving it, and a progress or final payment delayed more than seven days carries interest beginning on the eighth day at one and one-half percent a month, or a higher agreed rate. ORS 701.420 limits retainage to not more than five percent of the contract price of the work completed and adds interest at one percent a month on a final payment, commencing 30 days after the work is completed and accepted.