Construction Demand Letters

Demand letters are essential tools for preserving and enforcing your legal rights. In certain circumstances, Alabama and Federal law requires that a demand letter be served on a party before you have the right to file a lien or a lawsuit. Even where such requirements are not present, demand letters from you to the other party and then from your attorney to the other party explain your position regarding the facts and each party’s rights and obligations. Demand letters can help focus the issues in a dispute to facilitate a resolution. It is important to make the other party aware of your willingness to pursue all available legal remedies and the cost to all parties that will be associated with doing so. A proper demand letter should require a response within a fairly short window. When it comes to construction collections, time is of the essence.

Drafting a well-written demand letter to be mailed from you or from your attorney does not have to be time consuming and should not be expensive for you. Jarvis Law Firm, PC offers its clients low fixed fees for drafting individual demand letters. Concern over the cost should not stand in the way of you enforcing your legal rights. If you would like a form demand letter prepared for your specific business that you can adapt to each customer with an overdue invoice, Jarvis Law Firm will be happy to prepare one for you.

Meeting legal deadlines is crucial to the success of your use of demand letters to help resolve payment disputes. To be effective, your demand letter has to be timely. Statutes of limitations and/or prescription are running from the date your right to payment arose. Ala. Code § 35-11-215 (1975); Ala. Code § 35-11-218 (1975); Ala. Code § 35-11-210 (1975). Depending whether you provided work or supplies to a project, depending whether your contract was with another contractor or directly with an owner will affect the time limitations to enforce your rights.

Jarvis Law Firm can keep track of crucial deadlines for you and make sure your rights do not expire. If you have accounts receivable that are overdue, send us a copy of the unpaid invoice, and we can draft a demand letter from you to your client that respectfully demands payment and preserves your rights. If payment is not received within the time period stated in the initial demand, we will send a demand letter from the Jarvis Law Firm that sets out the valuable work you performed on the project, the amount owed, that it’s overdue, the legal basis for the recipient’s obligation to pay, intent to lien, and the consequences of failure to pay. This way your rights are fully protected if it is necessary to take additional steps to enforce your rights and collect what is due. If you need an experienced construction law lawyer based in Mobile, Alabama, call the Jarvis Law Firm today at (251) 219-9706. We offer our clients free consultations at our office or at yours and predictable fixed fees for these routine collection services that are transparent and predictable for you.