Dealing With an Alcoholic Husband: Unexpectedly Charged by Son for Construction Work? What Do You Think?
Question by gardensallday: Unexpectedly charged by son for construction work? What do you think?
My husband’s middle aged son just handed us an unexpected $ 7000 bill for labor for rebuilding our old steel building, which is 3 car garage size. He implied very strongly MANY times that he was not going to charge for his labor, but we gave him $ 2000 because he had medical bills and told him to keep it. The son now says we still owe him $ 5000. The building is almost done, a year late, and our lumber was rotting in the yard all winter and spring (ok, it did not rot in wintertime). We purchased the materials. The son says that normal rate is $ 50 an hour, and he is giving us a deal at $ 25 an hour.
MANY times he would say to my husband, “Don’t worry about it, Dad. I have it taken care of. ..” and so on.
My husband is blind and I am seriously mentally ill and we are both retired, and we live in a junky old house with junky old cars. We are obviously poor. The building was about to fall down, but we cannot afford to pay my husband’s son $ 5000 and would not have had this job done if we knew he would charge this amount. In fact, my husband and I have never charged for helping family members with projects, albeit this project was a very large one.
I don’t trust this son ( he has done some serious untrustworthy stuff before) and do not believe he spent 280 hours on the 3 car size garage, because he worked on it some weekends, a few days in the week, only since late July.
Over and over BEFORE we started the project, my husband would ask him how much for his labor and the son would just smile and say “don’t worry about it Dad” and my husband would say “you know, we don’t have a lot of money, we are retired.” reply: “don’t worry about it dad, I’ve got it covered.” and so on. And his gf would pour it on too, “don’t go on the roof to fix your antenna, you’ve got a son right here in town who can come and help you.” Right. For $ 25 an hour, he will come adjust our antenna.
Do you think he is trying to take advantage of us? They are both alcoholics and this makes me trust the two of them even less. Or were we clueless and should have expected to pay $ 7000 in labor for a 20 by 40 pole barn type building? The materials were $ 4000 for the lumber and steel, and we paid that directly to the lumber company.
tx for advice!
Nobody else in my husband’s family charges for help, and nobody in my family does this, and we help others and never charge. We have not helped this son, though, except for free loans of thousands of dollars that were paid back, and he cuts a few cords of wood off our land at no charge. He has not needed help before, but if he had, we would have helped.
Best answer:
Answer by vivi
If you did not sign a contract, he has no right to charge you. Is he a contractor with a license? If yes, he should have known better and make a contract to make sure he will get paid. If not, where in the world does he think someone is going to pay 50 or 25 dollars an hour for labor to someone who does not have a contractor license?
whatever the case, i do not think you should pay him anything.
Or if you have to pay him some money to avoid any problems with him, and he is not a contractor, give him the minimum wage( not more).
my husband does all kind of jobs for his mom and my parents, and never in his life would have the thought to charge them anything.
i hope this helps you (:
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