After natural disasters damage homes, churches, offices, and other buildings, you may be vulnerable to being taken advantage of in contracts for rebuilding or repairs. You may feel greater pressure to make a decision and sign a contract that someone puts in front of you right away, instead of taking time to examine it as carefully as you should. Pressures of time, increased burdens, and difficulties of travel may also make it harder to get a lawyer's advice; and lawyers in the area may themselves face disaster-related problems when responding to the increased need for help.
This happened after 1997's flooding in the Red River Valley. The Real Property Law Section of the MSBA saw the need for people to have a form contract
Many people affected by this year's storms have similar needs. To help, the Real Property Section offers the form contract again. You can get it here in an Adobe Acrobat ("PDF") format. Many public libraries have Acrobat Reader 2.1 or 3.0, which will open and print this and other PDF forms. If you don't have Reader, you can download it for free from many places. One is here. PDF/Acrobat is the most commonly used format for forms on the web.
Please note: this form (like the paper original) is for 8.5"x14" paper, i.e., legal-size. If you are someone needing to rebuild or repair after disaster, or a lawyer helping someone in such need, you can download and reproduce the form for free. The form has been updated since it was first produced. Be sure any paper copy you use has the same updated words as this one.
A companion form that is often useful is a Receipt and Waiver of Mechanic's Lien Rights, Minnesota's Uniform Conveyancing Blank No. 120-M. Copies may be obtained from the Miller-Davis Company on paper, or in a PDF version here.
The MSBA does not keep a list of contractors. At a minimum, you should ask would-be contractors if they are licensed, bonded and insured; and you should verify that they are by calling the city's offices. This form should be acceptable to most reputable contractors. If contractors have their own forms, check very carefully to see that their provisions are comparable to the ones here in protecting you. If you have any doubts about how much protection a contractor's different form gives you, you should ask a lawyer.
Users of America OnLine and Internet Explorer might see a blank screen when trying to open either of these Adobe *.pdf files. This is a known issue with IE. If this happens to you, and you are using a version of Adobe Acrobat Reader older than version 3.01, please try again after making the free upgrade of Adobe Acrobat Reader to version 3.01. If you still have problems with the latest version of Reader, please check Microsoft technical support where you can find a detailed discussion on pdf files appearing as blank screens. Some people find it works better not to try viewing the document immediately using Acrobat as a plug-in, but instead to use the "Save Target As..." Option, specifying "PDF File Format" and a known path, and then after the download use Adobe Acrobat Reader as a stand-separate program to open the file.
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