A payment bond claim is not an argument about whether you are owed money. It is a sequence of dated steps, and most claims that fail do so on the dates rather than on the debt.
The steps are broadly the same everywhere. The events that start their clocks are not.
Step one: know which claimant you are
Every payment bond statute in this series distinguishes a claimant who dealt directly with the prime contractor from one who dealt only with a subcontractor. The first group generally has a right of action that arises by itself. The second group has the same right subject to a notice condition.
This is a question about your contract, not about your work, and it is answered before anything else because it decides whether steps two and three apply to you at all.
Step two: get the bond
You cannot compute a deadline against an instrument you have not read, and the bond form frequently names the surety, the obligee, the penal sum and the notice address you will need. On federal work there is a statutory route to a copy. On state work the route varies, and the contracting body is usually the place to start.
Step three: the notice, and the event it hangs off
Here is where jurisdictions genuinely diverge.
The federal model — 90 days from your last work. 40 U.S.C. § 3133(b)(2) requires the second-tier claimant to give written notice to the contractor “within 90 days from the date on which the person did or performed the last of the labor or furnished or supplied the last of the material,” stating “with substantial accuracy the amount claimed and the name of the party to whom the material was furnished.”
Maine tracks it, and adds a delivery method. Under 14 M.R.S. § 871 the second-tier claimant has no right of action unless notice is given within the same 90 days with the same content — and the notice “must be served by registered or certified mail, postage prepaid, in an envelope addressed to the contractor at any place the contractor maintains an office or conducts business, or at the contractor’s residence.” The statute specifies how, not just when.
Oklahoma extends the class and keeps the period. 61 O.S. § 1 gives the right of action to a claimant with a direct contractual relationship with a subcontractor “regardless of tier,” on written notice to the contractor and surety within ninety days of the last labor or material, again “stating with substantial accuracy the amount claimed.” The notice goes to two recipients, not one.
Nevada requires a notice before there is any dispute. NRS § 339.025 conditions a second-tier claimant’s action on two notices. The second is familiar — written notice within 90 days from the last labor or material. The first is not: the claimant must have
“within 30 days after furnishing the first of such materials or performing the first of such labor, served on the contractor a written notice which shall inform the latter of the nature of the materials being furnished or to be furnished, or the labor performed or to be performed, and identifying the person contracting for such labor or materials and the site”
Thirty days after you start. A supplier who begins deliveries in January and is paid promptly until August has, in Nevada, already lost or preserved this step months before anyone thought there was a problem.
Colorado starts from a published date. C.R.S. § 38-26-106 permits an action “at any time within ninety days following the date fixed for final settlement as published.” The trigger is not the claimant’s own work at all — it is a date fixed and published by the contracting body, which means the claimant has to be watching for it.
Step four: suit, within a limitation period that is also measured from an event
The federal action must be brought within one year of the claimant’s last labor or material. Maine sets the same one year, with an exception for material suppliers whose claim amount “is not ascertainable due to the unavailability of final quantity estimates,” in which case the year runs from the determination of those estimates (14 M.R.S. § 871).
Oklahoma builds a longer structure: no action after one year from the last labor or material, “unless a prior claim has been filed within one (1) year,” in which case no action may be brought after two years (61 O.S. § 1). Filing the claim inside the first year buys a second one.
Venue is usually specified as well. Nevada requires the action to be brought “in the appropriate court of the political subdivision where the contract for which the bond was given was to be performed” (NRS § 339.025).
The pattern worth taking away
Four steps, and only the first is about the merits. The rest are arithmetic performed on dates, and the dates come from four different kinds of event:
- something you did last (federal, Maine, Oklahoma)
- something you did first (Nevada’s preliminary notice)
- something the contracting body published (Colorado)
- something the contracting body determined (Maine’s final quantity estimates)
A claimant who only knows the federal rule will look for the wrong event in three of those four.
What this page does not cover
The states named here are the ones whose claim provisions have been read in full. Others in the corpus differ again, and a state not named above should not be assumed to follow the federal model because several of its neighbors do.
Nothing here addresses performance bond claims, which run to the owner and follow the contract rather than these notice statutes, or private-project bonds, where the bond form rather than a statute sets the procedure.
