My husband and I bought a house contract for deed in Jan 2008 after a year of being there and going further and further into debt we figured out we really weren't ready to buy and couldn't really afford to stay so we called the seller up and told him we wanted to back out. My husband and I had said from the beginning if he put up a big fuss about it we wouldn't move we'd try and figure it out. Well the seller was fine. We had a few damages we had done but also a lot we had fixed. One damage was we pulled the fridge out at one point to clean behind it and when putting it back the fridge snagged on the linolium and tore a hole in it. Another issue was when we moved in the ceiling in the basement was waving and not in the best shape we tore it down with intentions of replacing it but never got around to it. The last "damage" was we got a lot of rain, almost the whole town was flooded and the basement ended up getting flooded so we had to tear the carpet out of there and that was the same weekend we told him we were moving. So after moving everything out he came to inspect and asked us to fix those 3 things, the carpet we were waiting to hear if fema was going to help pay for it. So we told him to have a contractor look at it and give us an estimate. Well after thinking about it we decided the ceiling would be cheaper to fix ourselves so I called the seller asked about fixing it and he ho hummed over it saying he'd call back. Well he called back the next day leaving a message on my phone and adding to everything he wanted fixed. At that point I got advice from an attorney, who says we don't owe him anything. The other factor in this mess is the seller claims he has lost the contract and he had never given us one so there is no contract to go by. My fear on leaning on that factor is that the contract will eventually show up. Well I called the seller after talking to the lawyer and said we won't be paying anything. He got mad and hung up the phone on me and I didn't hear from him for 2 months. Well this past week he showed up at my work dropped off an envelope and walked out the door. The envelope held a bill of $2100 that he wants us to pay by Jan 21st. I don't know where to go from here, do we ignore it or go to an attorney and ask them to handle it?

Get an attorney... it will cost something, but they will know the intracacy of the law and know what you do and don't have to do.

Typically if you back out of a contract there are penalties... that would be spelled out in the contract.

Don't ignore the bill. Take it to an attorney and find out if you are liable for it or not. If you are, then you can be sued if you don't pay. If you have to pay, then you need to find out. Maybe you can make payments.