On Wednesday, September 16, 2015 at 12:49:22 AM UTC-4, micky wrote:
In alt.home.repair, on Mon, 14 Sep 2015 04:40:31 -0700 (PDT), trader_4
wrote:

On Monday, September 14, 2015 at 3:35:13 AM UTC-4, micky wrote:
In alt.home.repair, on Sun, 13 Sep 2015 14:39:52 -0500, Unquestionably
Confused wrote:


7) Now the neighbor says "F**k you! I'm not paying anything"

No. She's offering 15 dollars a month. He put that at the end
somewhere, so I think a lot of people missed it.

They could have "agreed" at the outset for the neighbor to pay $200 a
month and that's fine and had it been reduced to a contract the courts
would uphold it and the neighbor would be on the hook for that amount.
You can negotiate anything and you can contract to do anything. Once
you do, you're liable.

Usually, but not forever. If no time peiiod is specified, the court
will assume a reasonable time. Like maybe a year. Or maybe less.
Then they get to renegotiate.


I don't think a court would even consider a "reasonable" time period.
If there was no time period agreed to, I'd say the contract is good for
as long as both parties are OK with it. Say a guy comes to your house
selling bottled water. You just agree to take 10 gallons a week, for $10.
How long does that bind either party for? I'd say the same thing, as long
as both parties are still OK with it.

This is not the same situation. The water guy can sell water to anyone
and many people. The OP is limited to one customer and he has to be the
guy who lives next door.

I didn't say they were exactly the same thing, only that there are people
here saying that this contract binds the two parties forever, because
no time period was specified. And the example I gave is one where
similarly no time period was specified, so are the parties there
responsible for that contract forever? If the homeowner decides he
doesn't like the water after two weeks, does he have to keep taking it?


And the plan when the house was split was for
the guy next door to share water expenses.

We presume that's true, but we don't know the actual history or
what's in the master deed, etc.


But it probably won't go to
court so we'll never know. You can have the last word.


From what I've heard so far, I wouldn't be so sure. Plenty
of cases like this wind up in court. He says they are no
longer on speaking terms. And contrary to what some people
say, I don't see accurately monitoring the actual usage,
determining how to split not only the costs of electric,
but the fair cost of the existing investment, maintenance, etc.
as trivial. It's not trivial from the monitoring eqpt that
would be required, nor is it trivial to get parties that are
no longer talking to agree on the other numbers that have
great variability. Their best bet might be arbitration, if they
can agree to that.