§ 8544 Stop Payment Notice Priority

• •If you're owed money for construction work and you tell the bank to stop paying the owner, that notice comes first—even if the owner already promised that money to someone else.
• •It doesn’t matter if the owner promised the money before or after you gave the stop notice—your notice wins.
• •This rule helps workers and suppliers get paid before the money goes somewhere else.

A carpenter finishes building a house but doesn’t get paid. The owner of the house already told the bank to pay the money to someone else. The carpenter tells the bank to stop paying the owner.

The bank must listen to the carpenter first, even if the owner promised the money to someone else earlier. The carpenter gets paid before anyone else.