Hiring Mold Remediation in Maine? Read the Contract Law

This week the CBS13 I-Team reported on a southern Maine contractor who has been ordered to pay more than $1.2 million in combined civil judgments to homeowners who say he took their money and left the work unfinished. One of them handed over a $20,000 deposit, then another $80,000 for materials that never showed up. He won in court and expects to collect nothing, because the contractor told a judge he has no assets and no income. The Attorney General’s office took about 600 contractor complaints in 2025, and Maine remains one of six states with no regulation of general home contractors. A licensing bill died last session when it went unfunded.

If you are planning mold abatement work this fall, that story should change how you read every proposal that lands in your inbox. Mold work sits in the least protected corner of that unregulated trade. Maine licenses electricians and plumbers. It does not license general contractors, and it issues no mold remediation license or state mold certification of any kind. Nobody screens the person you hire before they knock. The screening happens in the contract, before your deposit clears, or it does not happen at all.

The one law that already protects you

Maine’s Home Construction Contract Act applies to remediation jobs the same as it does to a garage build. Under 10 M.R.S. section 1487, any home construction contract over $3,000 in labor and materials must be in writing, signed by both parties, with a copy in your hands before work starts. The statute spells out what the document has to contain: both parties’ names and contact information, the property address, an estimated start date and completion date, the total price, a description of the work and materials, a warranty statement, and a method of payment with the initial down payment capped at one third of the total contract price.

That one-third cap is the line the I-Team story turns on. A $100,000 project funded $20,000 and then $80,000 up front means the homeowner had paid for the whole job before a single wall went up. On a remediation contract, a request for half or more up front tells you how the rest of the job will go. The cap is not a suggestion. Under section 1490, a violation of the contract law is prima facie evidence of a violation of Maine’s Unfair Trade Practices Act, which matters if you ever end up in front of a judge. The Attorney General publishes a plain-language guide and a sample contract. Reading it takes ten minutes and costs nothing.

How the money should move on a mold job

A remediation project has natural checkpoints, and payments should follow them. Containment goes up and demolition of affected material happens. The moisture source gets repaired. Treatment and cleaning happen. The space dries down and gets verified. We structure our own work so the owner can see each stage finish before the next dollar moves, and any established remediation company can do the same. When a proposal wants most of the money before containment goes up, the schedule is protecting the contractor from you, and you should read it that way.

Hold the last payment until the job proves itself. EPA’s mold cleanup guidance is blunt that mold returns wherever moisture stays, so a finished job means the source repair is done and the space holds a normal humidity reading, not just that the visible growth is gone. Ask for the closing moisture readings in writing. A contractor who takes them anyway will not mind showing you.

Check the company before you take the estimate

Every check that would have flagged the contractor in this week’s story was free. Call the Attorney General’s consumer line and ask whether complaints are on file for the company name and the owner’s name. Search Maine’s court records for small claims and civil judgments, and search every business name the person uses, since the I-Team found judgments spread across two companies. Ask for a certificate of insurance sent to you directly from the insurance agent, since a paper copy handed over in a driveway is easy to fake and a lapsed policy looks identical to a live one. References only help if you call the oldest one on the list, because the freshest job is the one that has not had time to fail yet.

A judgment is the part people misunderstand. Winning in court gets you a piece of paper, and collecting on it requires the contractor to have something worth taking. The homeowners in the I-Team story hold $1.2 million in judgments and expect none of it. Every protection that actually works comes before the deposit, not after the collapse.

If you own rental property

The stakes doubled for landlords this summer. Mold is now written into Maine’s warranty of habitability, which we covered when the new rental mold law took effect in July. A remediation job that fails six months in puts you back in breach with your tenant while you chase the contractor who caused it. Vetting the remediation company is now part of managing your habitability exposure, and the paper trail from a well-run job, scope, payments tied to stages, closing moisture readings, is the same documentation that protects you in a tenant dispute.

Where to start

If you are lining up abatement work, get the moisture problem diagnosed before anyone quotes you a number. We offer a free assessment, and you can see what mold remediation typically costs in Maine and how our remediation process runs before you sign anything, with anyone. Our FAQ videos walk through the questions we get most. Whoever you hire, put the contract law to work. It is the only regulator this trade has.