Document One: The Contract, With Its Scope
Whatever you signed with a general contractor, plus any change orders, plus the scope of work attached to it. If the scope was verbal, write down now what you understood it to be and date that note.
This establishes what the prime contract was worth, which is the denominator in everything that follows. The framework is on our page covering protected party status and the cap.
Document Two: Every Notice, With Its Date
Anything that arrived from a subcontractor or supplier, with the envelope. A notice of the right to assert a lien under section 52-135 is the specific thing to look for, and it may not describe itself in language you recognise.
Sort them by date received. Where you can evidence the date with a postmark, keep it.
Why Is the Date the Thing Rather Than the Amount?
Document Three: What You Paid, and When
Every payment to the general contractor, with the date, the amount and the method. Bank statements and cleared cheques are better than memory, and both are better than nothing.
What you are building is a running balance: how much of the prime contract remained unpaid on any given date. Cross-referenced against document two, that produces the ceiling for each claim.
Document Four: What Is Actually Recorded
A search at the register of deeds for the county where the property sits. This is the one that tells you whether the problem is a demand letter or a cloud on your title, and those are very different problems.
What If I Search and Find Nothing?
Then Take the Folder to a Nebraska Lawyer
With those four things assembled, that appointment is short and productive. Without them it is exploratory and expensive, and you will be asked to go and find exactly this material.
The questions worth putting are whether you are a protected party, what each claim's ceiling appears to be, and whether a written demand under the 30 day rule would be useful.
Meanwhile, Do the One Thing That Needs No Paperwork
Secure the building. A covering on the roof and the openings closed up.
It costs a fraction of any repair, it preserves the framing that decides whether the property is repairable at all, and it is the only item on this page that gets more expensive purely by waiting.
What We Do With Your Address
The register search, in the correct county, and we tell you what we find whether or not you sell.
The parcel record. Jurisdiction, county, acreage and build year.
Local sale evidence. What the house would be worth repaired on your actual street.
The structure. What the framing appears to be and what a report would need to confirm.
What Comes Back
A written figure with each line visible: finished value, cost of the work, carrying cost and margin. Plus what the register shows, in plain terms, and a separate line for what we have deducted for unresolved claims so you can see it rather than infer it.
Why Itemise the Claims Deduction?
What Never Happens
No fee at any stage. No request that you clear the site, commission a report or repair anything first. No requirement that your claim be settled. No assignment of the contract to a third party. We do not contact your claimants, we do not offer a view on your protected party status, and we do not set deadlines while a title is being cleared.
Common Questions About the Process
How Long Does It Take?
Address to written figure is a few days. Closing depends on whether recorded claims need clearing, which can take weeks.
Do I Need to Be in Nebraska?
No. Out-of-state owners are common on inherited property and remote closing is routine.
I Have None of These Documents.
Then start with document four, which we can run for you, and rebuild the others from bank records and whatever the contractor will provide.