Ontario · Condominium Act, 1998
Three months from the default, minus the ten days of notice you owe the owner first. Enter the date of default and this works out all three dates, including the encumbrancer notice that decides whether the lien is worth anything.
This is a three month clock with a ten day tail. The lien expires three months after the default unless a certificate is registered by then, and the owner must have at least ten days of written notice before that registration. Work back from the expiry, not forward from today. Condominium Act, 1998, ss. 85(2), 85(4)
The lien expires
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✓ Verified 22 September 2026 · Condominium Act, 1998, ss. 85, 86; Legislation Act, 2006, ss. 88, 89
Sources checked automatically every Monday. Last check October 5, 2026, no change found. See the record
Dates are computed under the Legislation Act, 2006: months by s. 89(6), days between two events by s. 89(3), and the holiday extension by s. 89(1) against the s. 88(2) list. A day fixed as a holiday by proclamation cannot be predicted and is not included, so confirm against the registry calendar before relying on a date that falls close to one.
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Section 85(2) is blunt: the lien expires three months after the default that gave rise to it unless the corporation registers a certificate of lien within that time. Nothing revives it. The debt survives, but the security against the unit does not.
The working deadline is earlier than that, because section 85(4) requires at least ten days of written notice to the owner before the day the certificate is registered. A board that discovers the clock on day eighty-five has already lost: there is no longer time to give the notice and register inside the three months.
That is why this tool reports the notice date as prominently as the expiry. The expiry is the statutory limit. The notice date is the one a board actually has to act on.
Section 86(3) requires written notice of the lien to every encumbrancer whose encumbrance is registered against the title, on or before the day the certificate is registered. Section 86(4) says how: personal service, or registered prepaid mail to the encumbrancer's last known address.
Section 86(5) supplies the consequence, and it is the expensive one: the lien loses its priority over an encumbrance unless the corporation gives the required notice to that encumbrancer. The lien still exists, but it ranks behind the mortgage. On a unit without much equity that is the difference between recovering the arrears and recovering nothing.
Section 86(5) is expressly subject to s. 86(6), which matters once the registration day has passed. A notice given late, after the certificate is registered, restores priority in part: for the arrears that accrued in the three months before the notice is given and those that keep accruing after it, together with interest and reasonable collection costs. Anything older stays behind the mortgage. So a missed encumbrancer notice should go out the day the gap is noticed, not be written off.
Registering on time and telling nobody but the owner is the failure mode this section exists to punish.
Not by adding ninety days. Section 89(6) of the Legislation Act, 2006 counts the months from the day of the default, excluding the month that day falls in, and the period ends on the day in the final month with the same calendar number. Where that month has no such day, it ends on the last day of that month.
Counting ninety days instead would put the 31 January case on 1 May, one day past the expiry, with the certificate registered too late and the lien gone.
Section 89(3) settles how the ten days are counted, and it is worth quoting because the drafting anticipates the argument: a reference to a number of days between two events excludes the day on which the first event happens and includes the day on which the second event happens, even if the reference is to "at least" or "not less than" a number of days.
So notice given on 1 March permits registration on 11 March, not 12 March. This tool treats the notice date as the last date that works rather than a target, because the risk is entirely one-sided: notice given early costs nothing, notice given a day late costs the registration.
This one catches people. Section 89(1) extends a time limit that would otherwise expire on a holiday to the next day that is not a holiday, and section 88(2) lists them: Sunday, New Year's Day, Family Day, Good Friday, Easter Monday, Victoria Day, Canada Day, Labour Day, Thanksgiving Day, Remembrance Day, Christmas Day, Boxing Day, and any day fixed as a holiday by proclamation.
Saturday is not on that list. A three month expiry landing on a Saturday is not moved by section 89(1).
A different rule may still reach it. Section 89(2) extends a time limit for registering or filing a document that expires on a day when the place for doing so is not open during its regular hours of business. A land registry office closed on a Saturday brings that subsection into play. But it depends on the office actually being shut rather than on the day of the week, and it is a thin thing to plan a lien around. Treat a Saturday expiry as a Friday deadline.
It cannot see a holiday fixed by proclamation under section 88(2) paragraph 12. A proclamation amends no statute, so nothing in the published law changes when one is made and no automated check would catch it. Where a date here falls within a day or two of a possible proclaimed holiday, confirm against the registry calendar.
It also takes the default date as you give it. Identifying which missed payment started the clock is a legal question about the declaration, the by-laws and how the arrears accrued, and it is frequently the contested part. The arithmetic below is only as good as that date.
And it says nothing about the amount. Section 85(1) carries the unpaid contributions, all interest owing, and all reasonable legal costs and reasonable expenses incurred in collection or attempted collection, which is a question for your solicitor rather than a calculator.