The office supply stores (and certainly others) have legal CD's with about any general contract, wills, etc. on them. That might be a source.

A Google search for "construction contract forms" will turn up several sources. I checked this one and it looks pretty comprehensive.

Here is a link that might be useful: Construction contract forms

Hi! Hopefully you aren't the wife of our prospective client who is an attorney. He is unwilling to use our contract that was written by an attorney who specializes in construction contracts but would like to use an AIA contract. We have used AIA templates before because they seem to walk the line between owner and contractor. As to the question about whether your GC will be upset about the contract it will depend on how you phrase your rejection. My prospective just said "no" without an explanation. If your husband has specific objections I would send back the contract to the GC with changes in language and see how that is accepted. We spent over 12k developing our contract and have presented it twice.....both times to attorney's and haven't had it accepted by either party. I would have appreciated the input from the client who is also an attorney helping me to understand what he weak points of our contract are.

Good luck!

Bellamy,
No, I doubt that is us, though it is a similar situation. We're not intent on using an AIA contract. It's that our contractor's contract is a page and a half and says "we'll start work on this date, substantial completion by this date, it'll cost this much, you have three days to renig, that's it". It doesn't have anything substantial. We've found some templates, and some good information and are drafting some additions to the contract, and trying to keep a good balance between things that benefit the contractor and things that benefit us (we certainly don't want it to be all one-sided!). We're adding in things like that the contractor isn't responsible for additional costs based on things that aren't known (like open up a wall and find extensive termite damage or something (our walls are brick, so that would be far-fetched, but who knows what they might find)), as well as things that are important to us, like them keeping the site fairly clean on a day-to-day basis.

He certainly didn't spend any money developing his contract, and it was not vetted by any attorneys. He's an acquaintance of ours anyway, so hopefully it'll fly with him. We'll definitely explain why we'd want these things in there, though hopefully with including enough things that help protect him, too, he'll see the benefit.

Thanks for the contractor's perspective in making sure you frame the changes appropriately to the contractor. It does make a difference!

The only home construction contractor that ever complained to me about using an AIA form told my partner many years later that he had used the Cost of the Work form (with a GMP & shared savings) ever since because it had enabled him to get higher end projects and make a lot of money.

The selection really depends on the level of experience and education of the contractor and that varies widely in the home construction industry.

Another consideration is if you do use a more sophisticated contract than a proposal letter, who is going to administrate it if the contractor is unfamiliar with the level of project management usually required by such contracts? You would have to either add language to the proposal letter or delete some from the standard form. I recommend deleting it from a standard AIA small project form. It's not uncommon to draw a line through a third or more of the text. Of course, both parties should initial all modifications in the margin.