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  How to track your preliminary notice mailings

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This page contains ideas on how to track the myriad of paperwork involved with processing California 20-Day Preliminary Notice forms

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Ideas for tracking your preliminary notice certified mailings

When sending certified mail, there's a portion of the Certified Mail Receipt PS Form 3800 February 2000 that you keep for your own tracking purposes. This slip of paper has the tracking number of your envelope, as well as it records how much you spent, who the mailing was addressed to and what day it went. It's important to keep track of this Certified Mail Receipt, but because there are usually so many of them, this can be difficult. About the easiest way I've found to do this is to:
  1. Record the tracking number from the Certified Mail Receipt PS Form 3800 within a log I created.
  2. Tuck the Certified Mail Receipt PS Form 3800 into a pocket within the folder that contains the log.
  3. Every time a Return Receipt PS Form 3811 comes back to me (which indicates that the preliminary notice was received and by whom) I record it in the log next to the corresponding tracking number from #1 above.
  4. I then attach the two receipts (3800 & 3811) to my copy of the preliminary notice that I keep in my job folder.
  5. I review the log every few days to make sure I am not missing any return receipts 3811 (without the receipt you cannot prove that the intended recipient actually received the notice).

You need to keep track of these mailings to make sure every individual entity receives their prelim notice.

A bad scenario:

Your prelim notice doesn't make it to the owner and when payment is due the owner doesn't pay.

When it's proven in court that you are indeed owed this money, if you can't prove that the owner received your preliminary notice, then you most likely will not be allowed to attach a lien on his property.

The only way to prove that the owner (or any entity) received your notice is by showing his signature (or that of his authorized representative) on the return receipt.

The only way to show his signature is to present the return receipt with his signature on it and the only way to do that is to follow up on every single preliminary notice you send out. When the inevitable happens and you don't get the return receipt on a notice you sent out, you'll need to check with the post office to find out what's happened with your mailing. You may have to resend the notice.

If you've chosen to not pay for the return receipt (it does cost extra), and instead trust the Post Office to keep track of it, you're risking your lien rights. If you need to prove that a particular entity received your preliminary notice but the post office cannot find the receipt, you're most likely out of luck! With their track record being what it is - the USPS has misplaced/lost a lot of my mail - are you really going to trust them?

Remember your time limit, it's very short. It's a good idea to mail your prelim on the same day you begin work, or supply material, so that you have the entire 20 days to make sure everything has been done properly.

Below is a list of all the sections available on this topic. The next section (Part 7) consists of an article written by David Barnier, Attorney-at-Law, about what might happen if you don't prelim the proper entities.




Thank you for visiting our site. I hope that this series of articles is helpful to you! I'm always happy to receive feedback, so please do send me a note if you have anything you'd like to tell me. Thank you!! :)

Diane