I'm sorry this has happened to you. Once it is in the hands of lawyers you might be forced to settle in order to avoid even greater legal expenses; a cruel dilemma.

Who designed the house and what documents were listed in the contract?
Who wrote the contract?
Did the home inspector document the construction mistakes?
Was the GC informed of the mistakes in writing? Did he respond?

I'm sure it is too complex for anyone here to really assist you but I assume that at some point the GC's costs greatly exceeded his contract price and there has to be a reason for that. It might be difficult to sort it out especially in a form that a jury could understand. I've been on a lot of juries and most are thinking more about getting a free lunch.

You might consider hiring an architect to guide your lawyer in putting together a response no matter how experienced your home inspector might be. You should find one with experience in contract administration and dispute resolution, although all architects are trained in such matters.

You need to get this settled without going to court.

I wish you luck.

I would find what money you can to get a lawyer at least for the initial steps. Not knowing the facts, it's hard to say, but it's probably worth considering a countersuit against the contractor and probably the subs for failing to perform under the contract. If you have complaints on your side as to why he owes you money then you're in a much better position to settle since he faces the prospect of paying you money.

You definitely need a good construction lawyer.

If I were you (as a fellow homeowner, this is not legal advice), I would document all of the costs you incurred to finish the job, as well as the mistakes you haven't corrected and the costs you would incur to fix those, and any other damages you suffered because your contractor walked off the job, which presumably will add up to well more than the balance of your contract sum. Then get your lawyer to hammer your contractor's lawyer over the head with this. Make it clear that your contractor owes YOU money, not the other way around. As heimert said, you may have to file a counterclaim to make it clear that you're serious. Make it clear this is going to be a dogfight and that if he pursues it he's going to end up having to pay you, not the other way around.

Good luck. I've just been through a very similar situation, and it was no fun at all.

If your builder did not finish the job then he abandonded the contract. Why would you owe him for work not completed? Did he not have enough funds to pay the subcontractors during that time or did he keep the money for himself?
Our builder walked out on us as well. We were left with unfinished items. The largest being the complete heating system, ductwork an all. I was floored when I discovered how much we would have to pay to complete this work. Five moths after they walked out I did receive a call from one of the subcontractors attorney hoping we had not paid the builder in full. The builder had enough money to pay those subs, but he did not. I have a feeling there were more owed as well. I explained the situation to the attorney and he stated that there is a time frame that one can come back on the home owner and at this point it was gone by. He also stated that the courts in our area do not like to attach a lien on the property when this happens if the owner has paid the builder. So far that is where it was left with us. To this day we do not really know how many were owed and how much. There should be a requirement that builders show proof of payment to subcontractors with a sign off by the sub. There is no way of knowing what the builder does with the money that is given to them. What a nightmare.
I feel your anguish. Hope it works out for you. Once lawyers get into the picture it becomes more complicated. Hope you can find a way to settle this quickly without any added expense.
Good Luck!

It is not uncommon, when mistakes, unforseen conditions, delays, changes, etc. cause the projected cost of completing the Work to exceed the maximum compensation due to the GC (Stimulated Sun, Guaranteed Maximum Price, etc) and the cause of such issues have not been resolved, for the GC to terminate the contract rather than risk taking additional losses.

Any properly written construction contract has provisions to protect an owner caught in this kind of situation but for obvious reasons such wording is usually left out of contracts written by a contractor or by an organization that sells such agreement forms primarily to contractors.

It is common for lawyers to review contractor written construction contracts and not realize the degree to which an owner is vulnerable to being left holding the bag, so to speak. Few lawyers have much experience with construction disputes or how to modify an agreement to include reasonable protections to the owner for unresolved disputes during construction.

In my opinion, the best agreement forms are written by the AIA and provide well thought out protections for the owner. Many contractors dislike these forms for obvious reasons. I put the AIA agreement form in the bid package and advise my clients to reject any bid that does not include it.

At least two contractors have adopted an AIA "Cost of the Work with a Fee" agreement form for all of their work after being forced to use it on a project. Ten years later one of them said the form had allowed him to get higher end projects and had made him a lot of money. Ironically, he was the contractor who complained the most about using it on the original project.

There are huge financial risks in a construction project and the contractor has an obvious conflict of interest. No matter how honorable the contractor might be, he/she is on the other side of a contract and is not your agent.

Contractors have little incentive to learn better project management and contract administration methods because they deal primarily with owners with little construction knowledge and no professional representation (I don't mean a lawyer).

My advice is to not be intimidated by how builders like to do business; seek professional advice and take steps to protect yourself rather than expect the contractor to do it for you.

I can't offer you any advice.. just wanted to say how sorry I am. Hopefully you signed a contract that protected you.

We were thinking of buying 12 acres and finding a builder or going with the 2nd deal where you purchased the 12 acres of land with a new house. I couldn't find info on the builder and after reading stories like this decided not to take the chance.

We had a lawyer look over our contract before we started, had a very experienced home inspector as our advocate and had checked out this GC thoroughly.

Since you were able to do research, please find any sites that you can to add your experience once your attorney says it's ok. Hopefully it will help someone else thinking of using him.

Your situation is VERY similar to ours. Our decision has been to do what we have to in order to complete our build. We've been forced to hire a const. attorney to accomplish this as it's been a very uphill battle with our bank. Anyway, we're very close to getting it all worked out with the bank in order to continue building. Once our house is complete, we'll most likely go after the contractor for a number of issues. I feel for you and hopefully things will work out.

Just a few words about the minimum level of training and testing for construction professionals because I detect some confusion especially in terms of what person an owner should trust to write and administrate a construction contract.

Where I live, in order to take the architect or the construction supervisor license exam, the applicants must have worked in their respective fields for 3 years.

In MA There is no formal education requirement for a contractor applicant but the applicant for the architect license must have a professional degree which normally takes 5 years if combined with an undergraduate university education (3+2 program) or 7 years if the programs are separate (4+3). These programs include at least one semester course in contact writing and administration including dispute resolution.

In MA the contractor exam is 3 hours long and covers building codes, general knowledge and 10 specification categories.

For the entire U.S. the architect exam is 27 1/4 hours long and the construction documents/services exam (which includes contract writing, administration, and dispute resolution) is 3 hours long.

Despite the obvious difference in qualifications between architects and builders, most prospective homeowners readily allow a builder to write a construction contract for a project that will quite possibly represent the largest financial investment (and therefore the largest risk) of their lives.

The reason that is often expressed here is that there is no reason to pay an architect for drawing "blueprints" that a draftsman could produce for a fraction of the cost. I have to assume that this rationalization is due to a complete misunderstanding of the nature and complexity of the issues and pitfalls encountered in building a house suitable for their lifestyle within their budget.

I would strongly recommend that if you have this attitude and little understanding of design and construction, you should be looking for an existing house that you could modify to suit your needs either by do-it-yourself or small home improvement contractors over several years.

I could offer advice, but I think a lot of folks come here for support as much as anything.

Our remodel ended similarly, 2 years ago. We had a very detailed scope, used the AIA contract, and negotiated fixed pricing based on that. Went through GC's references ahead of time and they were all good. We knew it was a big project for him, but we didn't know til after the fact that he couldn't float the job and was mostly winging it on the construction details.

After he left, GC offered payment to walk away w/o us going after him. He ended up walking/stomping away from that negotiation w/ DW (his photo is shown w/ the definition of the macho Latino stereotype). Then he hooked up w/ a sleazebag lawyer (who was suspended from the bar at the time) and proceeded to sue us in order to try to extort money for it to go away.

I ended up doing the finish carpentry myself and hiring subs to complete plumbing, electrical, HVAC, and floors. Spent 6 months of nights and weekends working to get my family back into our house. Did serious damage to my engineering career in the process. Cost to complete was thousands and thousands over contract price (and even our contingency $$), even w/ my free labor.

We made missteps with our legal representation, but the bottom line was that we got to a point where the next step was to either take a pittance from him or spend everything we had to do depos and maybe end up in court. I'm talking sell-your-possessions spend everything. We walked away with something like $2k and a mutual dismissal.

Fast forward to now, and I'm still trying to finish the things I was doing around the periphery of the remodeling, plus there's all the stuff that's f-d up and needs fixing. Reading the other thread about screw pops made me chuckle- I see them every day and wonder, "when am I going to get time to add that to the list."

The good part is that it's gorgeous, exactly what we wanted, and we're living there w/ our munchkin and mostly enjoying it. The weekends just involve a lot of DIY still.

Maybe one of these days the whole thing won't make me get all worked up just thinking about it.

Good luck. Find a good lawyer and gather all your photos/notes/correspondence/etc.

I tried to post but it kept rejecting my message saying I didn't put a title for the link in my post, even though I had. Please try www.hadd.com

I've heard of this happening more and more lately. I think builders are trying to recoup losses caused by their own poor business practices which have caught up with them.