How to File a Lien Against a Business: 6 Kinds of Lien and What Each Requires First

No business acquires a lien against another business by being owed money and saying so in writing. Every lien New York recognizes rests on something that happened first: a judgment, a signed security agreement, a construction contract performed on real property, a tax assessment followed by a demand, a lawsuit in which a lawyer appeared. The unpaid invoice is a claim. A lien is a claim that the law has given an address.

So the question behind a search for how to put a lien on a business for nonpayment has an answer most creditors find irritating, which is that the lien comes at the end of a process rather than at its start. The six kinds below are the ones a New York business creditor is likely to meet, ordered roughly by how much must happen before each one exists. The fees quoted are statutory or filing office amounts as they read in September 2026, and a county clerk may add charges of its own.

1. The Judgment Comes First, and the Lien Follows It Into the County Records

For an unpaid customer, a supplier, or a tenant that walked away, the route to a lien on a business runs through a courtroom. A New York City corporation, partnership, or association with its principal office in the state may bring a commercial claim in the Civil Court for up to $10,000, exclusive of interest and costs, under section 1801-A of the New York City Civil Court Act. The filing fee is $25 plus the cost of mailings, and the claimant must certify that it has brought no more than five such actions in the calendar month. Larger debts go to Supreme Court, with its own index fees and, as a practical matter, a lawyer.

Once a money judgment is entered, CPLR 5018(a) directs the clerk to docket it immediately after the judgment roll is filed. Docketing is what turns the judgment into a lien on real property. Under CPLR 5203(a), a transfer of the debtor's interest in real property in that county is not effective against the judgment creditor from docketing until ten years after the judgment roll was filed, and the creditor may in some circumstances move to extend that period. A transcript docketed in another county has the same effect there; the clerk's statutory fee for filing one is $25 in the counties of New York City and $10 elsewhere, under CPLR 8021(a)(7).

Most small businesses in the city own no real estate at all. They lease a storefront, a floor, a bay in an industrial building, and so the docketed judgment against such a company sits in the county index the way a deed restriction sits on a lot in a subdivision the developer never built out: recorded, enforceable, and attached to nothing anyone can walk on. The judgment still matters, because it opens the enforcement devices of CPLR article 52, and because an owner who later buys a building in that county will find the docket waiting. It remains, as to the business itself, a lien on an absence. Whether that absence is worth the cost of the lawsuit depends less on law than on what the debtor happens to own, which a creditor should learn before filing rather than after.

A judgment is presumed paid after twenty years under CPLR 211(b). Few commercial creditors wait that long.

2. Personal Property Answers to the Sheriff, Not the Clerk

A docketed judgment does not by itself encumber a bank account, a truck, or an inventory of shelving. Priority in personal property comes from delivering an execution to the sheriff. CPLR 5202(a) makes the creditor's rights superior to later transferees once that delivery occurs, subject to exceptions for a buyer who paid fair consideration before the levy.

The execution itself issues from the clerk or the creditor's attorney and is returnable within sixty days. That is the lien on movable things, and it is shorter lived than most creditors assume.

3. A Mechanic's Lien Runs on a Calendar the Contractor Does Not Keep

New York gives a lien without any lawsuit to one class of creditor. Lien Law 3 reaches a contractor, subcontractor, laborer, materialman, and (in a list that reads as if drafted by someone with a garden) a nurseryman and a person selling fruit or ornamental trees, roses, shrubbery, vines and small fruits, provided the work improved real property with the consent or at the request of the owner.

The notice of lien must be filed in the county clerk's office where the property sits within eight months after completion of the contract or the final performance of work or furnishing of materials, and within four months for a single family dwelling, under Lien Law 10. A copy must be served on the owner within five days before or thirty days after filing, and proof of that service must reach the clerk within thirty five days, or the notice terminates as a lien. The clerk's statutory fee to file the notice is $30 in New York City counties and $15 elsewhere, under CPLR 8021(a)(4).

The lien lasts one year from filing unless the lienor begins a foreclosure action with a notice of pendency or files an extension, and a single family lien needs a court order to extend.

There is a trap in the word owner. The lien attaches to the improved real property, so a contractor who renovated a restaurant for a tenant holds a claim against the landlord's building only if the landlord consented or requested the work, which is a factual question a construction lawyer should answer before the notice is prepared.

4. A UCC Lien Is Bargained For, and the Bargain Must Be Signed

Under the uniform text of UCC 9-203(b), a security interest becomes enforceable only if value has been given, the debtor has rights in the collateral, and (in the ordinary case) the debtor has authenticated a security agreement that describes the collateral. Section 9-509 permits a financing statement to be filed only with the debtor's authorization, and signing the security agreement supplies it.

A vendor holding a stack of unpaid invoices therefore cannot file a UCC-1 against its customer and call the result a lien. The filing would be unauthorized, and the debtor has remedies against an unauthorized record. If the customer's credit application contained a grant of a security interest, the analysis changes entirely, which is one reason to read that application again before assuming it was a formality.

When the paper does exist, the New York Department of State charges $20 to file a UCC-1 electronically and $40 on paper or by fax, and the filing lapses after five years unless continued.

5. Tax Liens Belong to Governments

A private creditor cannot file one. Under 26 U.S.C. 6321, when a person liable for a federal tax neglects or refuses to pay after demand, the amount becomes a lien in favor of the United States on all of that person's property and rights to property. Section 6323(a) keeps that lien from defeating a purchaser, a secured party, a mechanic's lienor, or a judgment lien creditor until the government files its notice.

What this means for an unpaid supplier is a question of order in line, and the line is sometimes long.

6. The Lawyer's Lien Sits on the Client's Recovery

Judiciary Law 475 gives the attorney who appears for a party a lien on the client's cause of action, claim, or counterclaim. It attaches to a verdict, a settlement, a judgment, or a final order in the client's favor, and to the proceeds in whatever hands they come; the court may determine and enforce it on petition. The statute now reaches services in a settlement negotiation as well.

This belongs on the list because it shapes what a creditor actually nets. A business that hires counsel to sue a customer, win a judgment, and docket it will find its own lawyer holding a lien on what comes back, and the fee arrangement governs how much.

Where a Business on the Other Side of the Lien Stands

Some readers arrive here from the opposite position, owing money to merchant cash advance funders whose financing statements already sit against the company's name. Delancey Street is a debt settlement company, not a law firm, and its first look at MCA contracts, UCC filings, and the pressure behind them costs nothing and stays confidential, with independently licensed counsel engaged where a matter is legal. A creditor trying to perfect a lien, or a business defending a lawsuit that will produce one, needs a lawyer, and a settlement company is the wrong call for that work.

The six liens share one feature. Each is a record of something the law already decided had happened, and none of them will stand in for the event.