BG Legal - Home Renovation Question

[TacoTaru]

I'll try to make this as short and to the point as possible.

Seven months ago my mom entered an agreement with a contractor with a guy to have a lot of renovations done on her home for $74,000. In the contract it states that any cost that goes over this amount is on the contractor and she is not responsible; the guy also says that this project will be done in a little over 30 days. Skip to four months later, the neighbors have spotted this guys subcontractors drunk and high on the job as well as only showing up to the job every couple of days when they are suppose to be there every day working on this. After four months this crew is fired and another crew brought on in which they have to rebuy a majority of the materials the last crew did to make up for what the last crew fucked up.

In the contract she had agreed to have a matching gable on her garage that was on her house with shake on the front of the gable (this is all in the contract); however, the garage is built and the gable is not put on it it. Skip ahead when they do the house, the sub contractor calls my mom to see if they can do vinyl instead of shake to speed up the process and make it cheaper and my mom agrees.

Now that the project is done, the guy is asking for $88,000 instead of $74,000 saying that he "really" needs this money for "his family" and keeps using terms like "not that much" and "minor costs" to downplay the amount that the gable + shake would cost. As of this time the shake on the house gable and the gable + shake on the garage has NOT been taken out of the contract. My mom verbally agreed to split the difference with him, but after speaking with her long about it, she has decided to not pay it after all and is going to have two contractors come out to give her estimates on how much these things are going to take out of the contract. Does my mom have any leg to stand on, on getting out of the verbal agreement in Indiana? I did some looking but could not find out if verbal agreements were binding in Indiana. The monetary deductions from the contract should be a non-issue I would assume as he did not fufill his end of the contract on these issues.



Did not end up as short as I would have hoped so:

tl;dr mom agreed to pay extra money she doesn't owe, but has decided to back out of it because she realized she has no business paying this fuck. Are verbal contracts binding in Indiana or is she does she just have to hope the gable + shake + deduction come out to be what she agreed to pay?

[SephYuyX]

Verbal agreements arent inforced anywhere.
As long as you have the contracts and documents stating your side, you only own 74k.

[Yuri-G]

Verbal agreements arent inforced anywhere.
As long as you have the contracts and documents stating your side, you only own 74k.

not true, verbal agreements are binding in some circumstances and can definitely be enforced. I don't know enough about it to answer the OP's question, though.

http://articles.techrepublic.com.com...1-1028431.html

http://wiki.answers.com/Q/What_is_a_verbal_agreement

I was under the impression that they were only binding in certain states, however, google seems to disagree with me. so I'm not quite sure what's up.

[SephYuyX]

Only if you can prove what was said, was said.
Just say "The guy must have missunderstood, why would I want to pay an extra 14k when the contract says I dont have to."

[zoobernut]

Yeah it seems that even in states where verbal agreements are binding they would be trumped by a written contract.

I would say take them to small claims court. Your mother shouldn't even have to pay for the full amount of the contract considering they did not live up to their part of the contract.

[sephir]

Verbal agreements arent inforced anywhere.
As long as you have the contracts and documents stating your side, you only own 74k.

actually verbal contracts are enforceable, but difficult to prove.

If your mom signed a contract for that cost, unless she added more work to what was necessary then she only has to pay that amount. If however that amount was an estimate, then the contractor is limited to increasing the cost by a maximum of 10% and only when costs have been proven to be above normal (ie. something happened that was unexpected).

This is how the system is here in Canada, and from my understanding (I have 3 contractors as neighbors who do work in the US - one even is a regular on those TV home makeovers) is very close to the system in the United States.

[TacoTaru]

Thanks for the responses everyone, hopefully she will have sense enough to pursue this and not get screwed.

If your mom signed a contract for that cost, unless she added more work to what was necessary then she only has to pay that amount. If however that amount was an estimate, then the contractor is limited to increasing the cost by a maximum of 10% and only when costs have been proven to be above normal (ie. something happened that was unexpected).

In her contract she signed for the amount of $74,000 and any costs incurred after this point was on the contractor. She did have additional work done, but this part of the agreement has already been settled and paid for.

[jmc]

Yeah it seems that even in states where verbal agreements are binding they would be trumped by a written contract.

I would say take them to small claims court. Your mother shouldn't even have to pay for the full amount of the contract considering they did not live up to their part of the contract.

This is answer right here.

[Deadgye]

Yeah it seems that even in states where verbal agreements are binding they would be trumped by a written contract.

I would say take them to small claims court. Your mother shouldn't even have to pay for the full amount of the contract considering they did not live up to their part of the contract.

This is answer right here.