My Contractor Stopped Showing Up. Now What?

Start by documenting everything and putting your request in writing, because both matter regardless of how this ends. Then work out whether you are looking at a stall or a stop, because the two need completely different responses.

This page is general information and it is not legal advice. I am not an attorney and neither is anybody in my network. Nothing here tells you what you are owed or what any process will produce, because that depends on your contract, your facts and Maine law applied to both. What it does is set out an order of operations and who to contact.

Separately from everything below, somebody eventually has to finish the house. I match Maine homeowners with general contractors, and some of the builders I work with around Portland will take on unfinished work.

First, is this actually abandonment?

A quiet job site is frightening and it is usually not what you think it is.

Construction runs in bursts with real gaps between them, and the gaps are longer in Maine than almost anywhere. A crew can legitimately be off your site for two weeks waiting on a single component and there is nothing wrong.

Before anything else, call and ask a direct question: when will somebody be back on site, and what are they waiting for. A contractor who answers with a specific reason and a specific date is not gone. A contractor who does not answer at all is a different situation.

The distinction matters because the steps below strain a working relationship, and you do not want to fire them at somebody who was waiting on a window.

What do normal gaps in work look like?

Weather. Framing and exterior work stop for a hard stretch of Maine winter, and pouring concrete has a temperature floor.

Material lead times. Custom windows, cabinets, engineered beams and specialty orders run weeks or months, and a delay upstream is not something your builder controls.

Inspection waits. Work stops until an inspector arrives, and inspectors have their own queue.

A subcontractor's schedule. Your electrician's other job ran long, and yours moves behind it.

A genuine emergency, which happens to small businesses like it happens to everyone.

The common thread is that all five have an explanation somebody will give you when asked. The absence of an explanation is the signal, not the absence of a crew.

What should you do in the first 48 hours?

Once you have decided the silence is real, spend an evening on this before you do anything else.

Photograph everything. Every room, every wall, every exterior face, the site, the material stacked and unused. Date stamped, thorough, boring. Take four times as many as you think you need.

Write down the timeline from memory while it is fresh. When work started, when they were last there, what was said and by whom.

Gather the paper. The contract, every change order, every invoice, every cheque or transfer with dates and amounts, and every text and email thread. Put copies somewhere that is not only your phone.

Note what is exposed. Anything open to the weather is a clock running against you, and it changes the urgency of everything below.

Do not throw anything away or let anybody clean the site until you have finished the above.

Why should you put it in writing?

Text messages and phone calls are how the last three weeks went. A written letter changes the register, and a surprising number of stalled jobs restart at exactly this step.

Send it in a way that produces a record. Email is fine and certified mail is better, and there is no reason not to do both.

Keep the tone flat and factual. This document may be read later by people who were not there, and the version of you that is calm and specific reads far better than the version that is furious and right.

What do people usually put in that letter?

This is a description of common practice, not a template and not advice on what your letter should say. If the amounts involved are significant, an attorney should look at it before it goes out.

Most such letters cover the contract date and what it was for, when work last happened on site, a specific list of what remains unfinished, a request to resume with a date, and how the contractor should respond.

Two notes worth having. Keep the unfinished list concrete and physical rather than characterising anybody's conduct. And check your contract first, because many contain their own notice and cure provisions with their own requirements and timeframes, and those govern over anything general you read online.

Should you pay anything at this point?

If a draw is coming due, or the contractor asks for money to come back, this is the moment to slow down.

Do not release a payment ahead of work that has actually been completed. That principle held before the job stalled and it holds harder now.

If you are financing, tell your lender what is happening before the next draw goes out. Lenders deal with this more often than homeowners do and they have their own process for it.

Beyond that, the question of what to do about money already paid, money still owed, and whether to withhold anything, is a legal question about your specific contract. Take it to a Maine attorney rather than to a webpage.

Who should you call in Maine?

The contractor, once more, in writing. Covered above, and it is genuinely the step that resolves the most situations.

Your town's code enforcement office, if there is an open permit or a partly completed inspection. They are not going to chase your contractor, but they can tell you the state of the permit and what has to happen for the work to continue, and you need that information either way.

The Maine Attorney General's Consumer Protection Division. They take complaints about home construction and run a mediation program between consumers and businesses. Their consumer protection pages explain how to file. Mediation is voluntary on the business's side, so it is worth doing and it is not a guaranteed route to anything.

A Maine attorney, covered below.

Your homeowner's insurer, if there is damage from exposure or from the work itself, to understand what your own policy does and does not cover.

When should you call a lawyer?

Sooner than most people do, and there is no benefit to waiting until you are certain.

An initial consultation is often short and inexpensive, and it is the only place you will get an answer about your actual situation rather than a general one. Bring the documentation from the first 48 hours with you.

Circumstances where I would not wait: the money already paid is significant, the house is open to the weather, the contractor has stopped responding entirely, a supplier or subcontractor has contacted you about money, or your contract contains notice provisions you do not fully understand.

The Maine State Bar Association operates a lawyer referral service, and some Maine attorneys handle construction disputes specifically.

What is the lien risk nobody warns you about?

This one catches people and it is worth understanding early, because it can develop while you are focused elsewhere.

In broad terms, subcontractors and material suppliers who worked on your property and were not paid may have a route to place a lien against your home, and this can be true even where you already paid the general contractor. If the money did not reach the people who did the work, the fact that it left your account may not end the matter.

That is the general shape of it. Whether it applies to your situation, what the timeframes are, and what to do about it are legal questions with real deadlines attached, and they go to an attorney rather than anywhere else.

The practical action is small: if any subcontractor or supplier contacts you about an unpaid bill, do not ignore it and do not pay it on the spot. Write down who called and when, and raise it at your legal consultation.

Whose name is the permit in?

Almost always, the permit for your project was pulled by the contractor, and that has consequences once they are gone.

Your code office can tell you what the permit's status is, what inspections have passed, and what a new contractor would need to do to take the work over. Every town in Maine handles it differently, so the only answer that matters is your town's.

Do this early. It is a phone call, it costs nothing, and the answer shapes what the next contractor can and cannot do.

How do you get the job finished?

At some point, separate from anything legal, somebody has to finish your house. Those two tracks run in parallel and confusing them slows both down.

Before you bring anybody in, make sure your documentation is complete, because a new crew changes the site and the record of what was left behind stops being available.

Then check with your attorney before signing anything new. Depending on your contract and where the dispute stands, the timing of a replacement can matter.

When you do look, be straightforward about the situation. Trying to present a stalled job as a fresh one wastes everybody's time, and the contractor will work out what happened in about four minutes.

Why does the next contractor cost more?

This is the part that stings, and knowing it in advance helps.

Taking over a partly finished job is harder than starting one. They inherit somebody else's framing, somebody else's decisions, and somebody else's concealed work, and they carry the warranty on all of it once they touch it. Many good contractors decline this work entirely, which shrinks the pool you are choosing from.

Expect them to want to open things up and look, and expect to pay for that. It is the right instinct and refusing it is how the second contractor becomes another problem.

Expect the finishing number to be more than the unpaid balance on your original contract. That gap is real, it is not the new contractor being opportunistic, and how any of it gets resolved is part of the legal conversation rather than the construction one.

What does this look like from here?

The two things that make the biggest difference from this point are documentation and written communication, and both are entirely in your control today.

Beyond that, the honest answer is that outcomes vary enormously and depend on facts nobody can assess from a webpage. Some of these situations resolve in a fortnight with a phone call. Some do not resolve at all. Anybody who tells you which one yours is, without reading your contract, is guessing.

Get the documentation done. Send the letter. Talk to a lawyer. Call your code office. Those four are worth doing in every version of this.

Frequently asked questions

How long is too long with nobody on site? There is no fixed number, because material lead times and inspection queues legitimately run for weeks. The reliable signal is not the length of the gap, it is whether you can get a specific explanation and a specific date.

Can I just hire somebody else and keep going? It is not that simple, and the timing can matter depending on your contract and where things stand. Talk to an attorney before you sign a replacement, and talk to your code office about the permit.

Will the Attorney General make my contractor come back? Their consumer program is a mediation process between you and the business, and participation on the business's side is voluntary. It is worth filing and it is not an enforcement route that produces a guaranteed result.

Should I post about it publicly? Talk to your attorney first. Public statements during an active dispute can complicate matters, and that is exactly the kind of question a short consultation answers.

What if I paid a large deposit and nothing happened? Document what you paid and when, gather every communication, and take it to an attorney promptly. Maine law caps the initial deposit on a home construction contract at one third of the price, which may be relevant to your situation, and how it applies is a question for a lawyer.

Is this common? Common enough that this page exists. It is also strongly associated with a few things that were visible beforehand: a deposit past the cap, no written contract, pressure to pay ahead of the work, and no verifiable insurance.

Who can finish an abandoned job in Maine?

Once the legal side is in hand, the construction side is something I can help with. I match Maine homeowners with contractors, and takeover work is a specific thing some of my network will look at and others will not.

I cannot resolve a dispute, recover money, or tell you where you stand legally, and I will not pretend otherwise. What I can do is find you contractors who handle this kind of job and tell you honestly if I do not have one for your situation.

Tell me what town you are in and what state the project is in.

More on hiring: the full arc of hiring a Maine builder · the warning signs that come first · general contractors in Maine