Your contractor can file an insurance claim if you filed a police report. You will need a documented appraisal to establish insurance value. That’s different than retail value. But, no you can’t short their payment for something that cannot be proved. They will place a lien on your home for full payment.

Can they do the lien if their no licensed? The contract I signed stated they were licensed but our research with the city and state show no record of them under any name.

That is a question to ask the attorney that reviewed your contact. It will vary by state. If that didn’t happen on the front end, now is the time to protect yourself as much as possible, given project is coming to a close. Shorting anyone in money is guaranteed to make them pretty unhappy.

Obviously it will not make them happy but I'm not happy either when my wedding rings disappeared. I'm sure you wouldn't be excited either. Thank you for your comment.

Our contractor insisted that we put anything of value, including my purse, out of sight while they were working in the house. He said it was for his guy’s protection as well as ours. That seems like a sensible reminder for every contractor to make. I hope you get your rings back, but I don’t think you could, in all conscience, take the money out of your contractor’s wages.

Obviously it will not make them happy but I'm not happy either when my wedding rings disappeared.

Cook's Kitchen wrote "Shorting anyone in money is guaranteed to make them pretty unhappy" not to justify or compare the contractor's experience to yours but to explain why the contractor's "unhappiness" will likely lead to a lien and why your best step now is checking with your attorney. This is not about feelings, justified or not -- and yours are definitely justified (I would be sad, mad, and disappointed) -- but about proof, facts, and contractual particulars, to make sure this doesn't come back to bite you in the behind and add insult to injury.

I've consulted with our attorney, we have a course of action now, thanks. I'm fully aware of not letting feelings in the way of facts, you brought up unhappy but my question didn't suggest anything about feelings. It's okay, thank you for trying help.

you brought up unhappy but my question didn't suggest anything about feelings

You wrote above, "I'm not happy either when my wedding rings disappeared. I'm sure you wouldn't be excited either".

Glad to hear you consulted with your attorney and have a course of action. Good luck going forward, I hope you family can fully enjoy the remodel, and I'm sorry this happened to you.

Your missing rings are totally separate from payment for a contract. You cannot "short" the contractor's payment because you suspect a worker of stealing your rings. If the contractor fulfilled his side of the contract, you have to pay him.

Since rings were left on a table, and all that was moved out of the room, the rings, may have fell off the table, and not been noticed,and accidently swept or vacuumed up when they cleaned the floors. You have no way of proving, they were stolen. In any case, the contractor didnt steal them, so therefore, you need to pay him. File an insurance claim for the rings. You will be able to get new ones, even though, you have lost the sentimental value of what you had.

You didn’t put up your valuables? That's required in every contract by any reputable contractor that I’ve ever dealt with. It doesn’t matter if it’s your hand painted periwinkle Royal Doulton China, your Beanie Baby collection, your original bronze Remington, your opioid prescriptions, or your wedding rings. The home needs to be cleared out of valuables and unvuables alike. Lock and stock, before construction takes place.

If you don’t take basic precautions for your things, the risk is on you for anything getting filthy, broken, misplaced, or stolen.

But unless you have webcam footage showing someone pocketing your property, you can’t accuse someone of stealing. They can sue you for slander.

If you had an issue with them being unlicensed, you should have broken the contract, and not allowed them to do the work. Once they do the work, you owe them the money that you agreed to pay them. That’s what a contract means. You can not violate that contract and not pay them, just on a hunch that your rings were stolen and not lost. Contact your insurance company.

If the contractor is unlicensed, it's unlikely he has insurance either. What a sad thing to lose your wedding rings, how ever they disappeared. I would think twice about filing on my own insurance - sometimes even a small claim will trigger a cancellation of your policy. It's wise to use your insurance only for catastrophic losses and keep a large deductible to keep costs down and cover your small losses yourself.

You need to be proactive, not reactive. Check licensing and insurance before hiring someone. Don’t leave valuables lying around. You can get a small lockbox for your home where you can store jewelry, credit cards, cash etc. for times when there are people in your house, or for when you are away from home. Mine has a cable that secures it to the bed frame so it can’t be removed without heavy duty cutters. I paid $25 on Amazon.

Seriously, I am puzzled by this story. Did you leave rings valued 3k $ lying around when there were strangers in the room moving furniture? I trust people, but I would not do that. If this is what happened, where were your rings ? Why did you not file a police report and an insurance claim?

I would not short the contractor. I doubt it was the contractor. You do not know it was the person you suspect.

The contractor not being licensed is another story. Did you not ask him for his license number before signing a contract?

Correlation is not causation. There is a direct positive correlation between rising ice cream sales and an increase in drownings in summertime, but obviously eating ice cream does not cause drowning.

You have a correlation between contractor visits and missing rings. Without proof positive, you have nothing. Were I your contractor and you shorted me, I would sue your ass off.

P.S.: I've had movers steal a handgun and my favorite porn tapes, so I know how you feel. They got paid in full anyway.

Did you check down all the vents? Its also possible they just fell off the nightstand in the move and fell or got kicked into that or got vacuumed up. Or they may have been taken but there are a lot of assumptions in this thread. I also question not filing a police report right away.

Okay so from what I gather here, our contractor is a victim? I originally posted for helpful information not insulting comments and thank you for your input but here we go. Yes, I said I left them out of habit on my nightstand, my mistake, I should have put them away. Regardless, it is MY house so leaving things out in MY house isn't an invitation for a stranger to move or take. As for putting away valuables listed in the contract, no this contract doesn't read that although that's a given, I repeat I mistakenly left them on my bedside table out of habit. We did not file a police report right away in fear the contractor would not return and finish our job. We confronted the guy in charge and since then never saw the person we suspected again. (We paid 2/3 up front). We will be filing a police report in the upcoming days. All trash was collected from that room and put aside our house. My husband and I went through the trash with a fine tooth comb, no rings. We have no vents on the floor so falling through a vent is not an option. Yes, we could file on our insurance and with the deductible, would not receive replacement cost and risk our premium going up. Yes, we have cameras surrounding the house but not on the inside. The morning the suspected person was to return and finish his work, he showed up in flip flops, gathered his tools and sped away. We haven't seen him since. Like I said in my earlier post, we now have a plan of action with our attorney.

To the OP: I understand your heartbreak in losing your rings. My house was "burgled" and they stole my mother's wedding ring. Insurance can't replace that. Having said that, people here will point out preventive measures, too late for you, but may be helpful to readers who are going to have reno work done. No one can replace your original wedding ring but maybe you can use the opportunity to have a vow renewal service and get new rings for the ceremony. That way the rings will not be replacement rings, but rather renewal rings. The anger and pain is still fresh. If the rings are truly gone, you must find a way to move past that.

I find the idea that it is your job to sufficiently hide your valuables a bit silly. You are not going to stop someone who is intent on stealing your stuff from stealing it, you are more likely than not to just make detection and recovery more difficult. Were these rings stored in a drawer and taken from that drawer it is simply more likely that you would not have noticed their missing so quickly and without a solid time frame for the incident, recovery becomes all the more difficult.

I deal with sensitive client information all the time, it is my job to thoroughly vet the people who work for me and to take measures to protect client information. When I fail in that action it is my responsibility to cover the damage done and I will do so without complaint. Similarly it is the contractor's responsibility to cover the damage his poor hiring choices cause.

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This is a civil claim for the loss of valuables against someone who has a duty to take reasonably measures to protect your valuables, it is not a criminal case. You don't have to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that the rings were stolen by the worker, only that a preponderance of the evidence points to that conclusion.

These are not separate matters, this loss is a direct result of your contractor's poor vetting process for his employees. I would not hesitate to ask the contractor if he would prefer I file a police report and claim it against his insurance or if he would like to cover the incident out of his pocket directly.

If he says neither I would short his final payment. If he files a mechanics lien I would simply file a small claims court case against the contractor and ask that the perfection of the mechanic's lien be held until the court case can be resolved. It is very likely that you will win at least a partial settlement and that would likely vacate the mechanic's lien in its entirety and prevent refiling a mechanic's lien and thus would only allow a collection judgement through the normal court process.

I would pay him any money due at the outcome without making him pursue further action, but I might use that information to impress upon him some reasonable settlement beforehand.

Thank you bry911, this has been most helpful and almost 99% the advice we were given by our attorney. I'm not whining, of course the rings were sentimental, I'm not an emotional mess, just taking steps now to review our recourse and options we have to recover and purchase new ones.

Well what actually did your attorney tell you?