Anyone have any suggestions on where to find a good contract for a residential remodeler? New to the business and looking for some advice…
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Anyone have any suggestions on where to find a good contract for a residential remodeler? New to the business and looking for some advice...
Anyone have any suggestions on where to find a good contract for a residential remodeler?
Can't you find some way of working out your differences in lieu of offing the guy?
runnerguy
Send me an e mail and I'll attach my standard contracts to a reply. I have a couple I use all the time, another less frequently. Pretty straight forward. They have evolved over the years. If nothing else, they might bring up some issues you hadn't considered.
If you belong to a trade association they will probably have one that you can use or adapt for your use. Be aware that 'adhesion contracts' as these are sometimes called go to court with a few strikes against them.
You can write your own contract, of course. You should have a clear idea of how you want to work with your clients and what responsibilities you are willing to assume. The contract is simply a statement of the agreement between two (or more) parties. If that agreement is fair, clearly stated, and covers all points of contention that might reasonably arise between the parties during a project, a court shouldn't have any trouble with it. (If you've agreed to something that runs contrary to statute, the judge usually has the discretion to toss only that provision and keep the rest.)
Or you can hire a lawyer to write one for you, or to review one you've written yourself.
Before you do anything else, take a look at the contracts used by other outfits in your area if you can; you can't steal their language, but you can use the contract as a frame or model upon which to write your own.
Dinosaur
How now, Mighty Sauron, that thou art not brought
low by this? For thine evil pales before that which
foolish men call Justice....
I think I would follow some of Dino's advice and talk to a lawyer...especially one familair with your statearea where you will be working. Sure, you may pay a few hundred bucks for them to write itreview it but I would feel alot more comfortable using it!
When I started, I used some out of some of the construction books you can find almost anywhere but upon review my atty said there were some things that needed to be worded differently.
I would rather pay to find that out NOW than in court down the road if someone tried to fight me on something in the contract!
I would rather spend a few hundred dollars than lose a few thousand...or my ####!
Heh, heh. What the heck did you expect your attorney to say? That you didn't need him, just a book of standard contract forms for construction?
What a lot of people don't know is that many attorneys just pull contract clauses right out of standard textbooks. You need a clause for Change Orders? See 'Construction Change Order Law'. You need a clause for a release? See 'Gordon's Standard Forms of Agreement'. You need a Lien? See 'Liens For Dummies'....
The other thing most people don't know is that a lawyer is NOT responsible for the quality of his work. In other words, if he writes you a contract that goes over like a lead balloon with Hizzonner, you have no recourse against him.
The false belief hiring a lawyer guarantees you the contract will fly in court needs to be debunked. There IS NO GUARANTEE that any contract will fly in court; doesn't matter who wrote it.
Best an honest lawyer can do is to avoid the most common, already proven losers, and hope like heck the judge will swallow the rest of it.
Dinosaur
How now, Mighty Sauron, that thou art not broughtlow by this? For thine evil pales before that whichfoolish men call Justice....
Yeah but I feel much more comfotable having paid my atty to write it with veribiage for my area and state as opposed to just using one out of a book. And if I do get in hot water at some point, he will be the one defending me so I would rather have him defending his own work than some generic version.
Sure, an atty may not be repsonsible for everything he creates but I have to put some faith in his work or else I wouldn't be in business at all! I would just go work for someone else and not have any fun.
A tax preparer or an accountant is not responsible to the IRS for your taxes either but you go with the best you got.
The point is, your attorney probably pulled it out of a stock contract in a book, and then tweaked it just enough to apply to you. Just like we pull joist sizes off tables in the building code, lawyers pull contract language out of books based on contracts which have survived a court challenge.
It's not as slimy as it sounds; if framers had to calculate the loads and deflection on every piece of wood they used, they'd have to charge their clients a blue billion just to frame a simple bump out. Likewise, if lawyers had to research every contract clause....
Dinosaur
How now, Mighty Sauron, that thou art not broughtlow by this? For thine evil pales before that whichfoolish men call Justice....
And he may have...but its an 18 page contract that mentions alot of specifics to Florida so I am happy with it.
Hopefully it will never get challenged....most of the time I think I will be the one challenging anything in order to get paid!!!
Holy Craaap! 18 pages?? Who are you dealing with? The US government?
My contract is the terms that come with my estimates. You accept the estimate--either by signing it and/or by paying me the specified deposit--and you accept the contract. The two are inseparable.
It's about a page, maybe a page and a half long, depending on what size font you used to print it.
Which actually brings up a good point; in certain jurisdictions there are minimum font-size statutes for contracts. IIRC New York requires 10-point type with 2-point leading for disclosures and contracts (or at least they did in the late 70s when I was running a typesetting shop in NYC).
So, yes, there are some good reasons for having a local attorney check your contract to see if there aren't any local traps into which you might have unwittingly fallen. But if you understand the requirements of your business, and know how to use the internet for basic legal research, you should be able to come up with a contract that only needs to be 'tweaked' instead of written from scratch.
Dinosaur
How now, Mighty Sauron, that thou art not broughtlow by this? For thine evil pales before that whichfoolish men call Justice....
Thats why I had an atty write it. I feel covered for just about anything. In addition, Florida has certain verbiage like you mentioned that has to be in all bold, a certain size, etc. that deals with the Lien Law and stuff like that. That takes up a whole page in itself.
Yeah folks get a bit intimidated at first but I figure for some of the jobs I do, I need to have everything spelled out.
I just didn't feel comfortable entering into large projects with a one or two page write up as I felt there were things being omitted.
The down side of an attorney written contract is that some attorney's like to produce stuff with lots of technical language it it that can intimidate clients and make them wary of all this 'complicated stuff'. IMO attorneys should be keeping things simple and straight forward rather than complex and unfriendly. I sware, some attorneys will go overboard to CYA to CTA. Complex contracts can bite you in the A** as much as anything.
Oh, yeah, and of course you are right: most of the time, it's the builder who winds up suing the HO for nonpayment, so one phrase you need to make sure is somewhere in your contract is that 'timeliness of payment is of the essence of the contract.' Which means simply that if the goniff doesn't make progress payments on time, you can stop work without incurring any non-performance penalties.
It's a craap shoot, really. If you pull a decent judge who doesn't have a hardon for contractors, and if his DW treated him nice the morning of your hearing, you stand a decent chance of coming out of the courtroom with a smile on yer kisser. But if Hizzonner has been burned in his personal life by some slimeball contractor and/or his better half had a headache last night, you're gonna go down in flames, no matter how well your lawyer dotted his eyes and crossed his tees.
Example: Technically, a contract does not even have to be in written form. The essence of a contract is by long tradition and jurisprudence defined as a 'meeting of the minds' and that happens as soon as both parties express an intention to enter into a conractual relationship with each other. So a 'handshake' deal is just as legal in most places as an 18-page contract written out in beautiful legalese. The only problem would be proving who agreed to what, but that is not the same thing as proving that a contract exists.
Also, by statute and Common Law, if a defendant doesn't show up to defend himself against your accusations, you are entitled to a default judgement against him, and you're entitled to it without any further ado. Slam dunk, no questions asked. This principle is almost as sacred as they get, because if it weren't, all anyone would have to do to avoid the unpleasant consequences of a hearing going against him would be to stay home and ignore the whole thing.
But I have seen a guy get his butt unceremoniously tossed out of small claims (from which there is, unfortunately, no appeal in this province) simply because he had agreed on a handshake with the HO to paint his garage for $250...even tho the HO never showed up for the hearing.
Judge noted the defendant wasn't there, then demanded of the plaintiff to present his case anyway. The plaintiff said, well, My Lord, I agreed to paint his garage for $250, and when I had done it, he refused to pay me. Didn't give any reason; just flat out refused. Told me to sue him if I dared. So, that's the whole story, My Lord. All I want is my money. I did a good job, and paid for the paint and everything.
Judge started asking questions like he was the defendant's attorney on cross examination, then demanded to see the contract. Guy said, We just shook hands on it, My Lord. It was only $250, after all. Nobody bothers with a written contract for small jobs like that.
Judge looked at him and said, If you can't show me a contract, that means you're working under the table. You've got no business here. Get the hell out of my courtroom! Bang. Case dismissed.
It wasn't me, by the way; I was just there to sue a lawyer I'd fired who'd tried to bill me for three hours during which all he did was refuse to execute my instructions.
I lost, too.
Dinosaur
How now, Mighty Sauron, that thou art not broughtlow by this? For thine evil pales before that whichfoolish men call Justice....
Sadly, I think most of the time us contractors lose only because there have been so many bad guys that have gone before us that have skewed the lawyers, judges, etc to dislike us. Its unfortunate. Kind of like how used car sales folks have a bad rap yet I know a few who are really good.
Yep, and everybody craaps on lawyers too, even though I've actually met two or three with whom I might be willing to allow someone else's daughter to dance.
Just can't understand it....
Dinosaur
How now, Mighty Sauron, that thou art not broughtlow by this? For thine evil pales before that whichfoolish men call Justice....
I agree. But I still haven't met a cell phone salesman I trust! ;)
I can attest, first hand, to your statement Dino. I have paid 15k because a lawyer didn't really pay attention to my situation. I had a slam dunk case of malpractice, according to me newest and greatest atty, but the statue of limitations expired. It was two years on a real estate contract.
If any tradesman except a mouthpiece had screwed the pooch like that, you coulda sued him and won. But suing a lawyer is like using one burning thousand dollar bill to light another....
Remember the immortal words of Shaggy: "There's only about two or three good lawyers in the world, and we're too busy to take care of everybody...."
Dinosaur
How now, Mighty Sauron, that thou art not broughtlow by this? For thine evil pales before that whichfoolish men call Justice....