A lis pendens is a pending lawsuit or legal action, or a formal notice of a pending lawsuit or legal action. For example, a lis pendens is an official public notice that a piece of real property has a pending lawsuit or claim attached to it—which may be especially relevant to potential buyers of the property, as a sale of the property will probably not extinguish or resolve the pending claim.

Lis pendens might also refer to the jurisdiction (power, authority, control) a court acquires over property while a legal action is pending. Or lis pendens may refer to a notice recorded in the public records (often county records) in the chain of title to a piece of real property—which is required or permitted in some jurisdictions to put all persons on notice that the property is the subject of litigation or of a claim. This notice informs potential buyers of the property that their future ownership of the property may be subject to other claims.

Lis pendens is often used when spouses are going through the divorce process and their real property assets, for example, have not been finally divided by their agreement or by the court. Banks commonly use the lis pendens process to put the public on notice that a property is in foreclosure. And a homeowners’ association may file a lis pendens when it seeks to foreclose on a homeowner’s home to satisfy delinquent fees or assessments.

The procedure for a lis pendens is usually located in a state’s statutes—often in the property code or in the code of civil procedure, for example.

In Kansas, a lis pendens is a notice that signals there is a pending lawsuit concerning a specific piece of real property. This notice is typically recorded in the public records of the county where the property is located, which serves to alert potential buyers or other interested parties that there are legal claims affecting the property. The presence of a lis pendens can impact the transferability of the property title, as any subsequent purchaser would take the property subject to the outcome of the pending litigation. Kansas statutes provide the framework for filing a lis pendens, which is generally found in the state's civil procedure codes. The notice is particularly common in cases involving divorce, where the division of real property assets is in dispute, in foreclosure proceedings initiated by banks, or in actions by homeowners’ associations to recover delinquent fees. The filing of a lis pendens ensures that the legal rights associated with the property cannot be ignored by parties to a transaction and that any judgment or resolution of the dispute will be binding on future owners.