Upon Final Payment: Fill & Download for Free

I own a technology management firm. We were retained by MUO (Miss Universe Organization), a Trump company at the time (2009). We were tasked with pulling together a network predicated upon the assembly of ‘real-time infrastructure’ to meet the communication challenges of the constant shift in location, international standards of communication, and geographically dispersed locations .Our travel & expense costs were never paid. We could live with that (sort of). But as the months passed we couldn’t get a single bill paid by the MUO. Trump cited reasons such as “that’s a different management team, you will have to live with their decisions.” A friend close to Trump who recommended my firm reached out to him in an effort to obtain final payment. Trump was so annoyed by the call that he said “I’ll be damned if that company ever gets a dime from my team.”Trump was true to his word. Final bill for MUO ending 2009: $275k - collected to date: Zero. Now that he’s sold off the MUO as of one year ago he now claims no memory of “the deal.”Trump’s idea behind ‘The Art of The Deal” should have focused on his true “art” & passion for screwing anyone & everyone.However, when we continued our collection efforts we received letters from his legal team citing no obligation to pay for services that were not delivered according to the agreement. We filed a disconnect notice for non-payment. Waited & waited to no avail. We pulled our servers 48 hrs prior to his next pageant . MUO called with demands to restore service. Their demands fell on deaf ears.Trump is a narcissistic crook. Most criminals are.*March 10th. 2017 UPDATE: Electrical contractor suing Trump Hotel for $2 million in unpaid bills

There was a little trick I used to use in my early days as a freelance developer. I would discreetly bury a date check into an important function that was hard coded to some future date so the function wouldn’t run after that date.if today < thatdate then... I would set the future date to 60 days out and when I turned over the final code, that went out with it. I figured that way if they never paid me the final payment, their app would stop working properly in 60 days. The variable names I used weren’t obvious like in my example, they would never have found it in the code. Once they paid, I would just change that if statement to if 1 = 1 and shoot then an email saying I found a minor bug in my code and give them the updated version.Fortunately I never had to use this method to get paid, but I was pretty proud of myself for coming up with it.I ended up moving away from the “half up front / half upon delivery” billing method and switched to milestone billing instead. Milestone billing is superior because it keeps the customer on task and prevents them from dangling the check with a bunch of last minute requests. You basically break the project up into milestones and then bill them at the START of each milestone. The customer must approve each milestone when it’s complete and pay the next payment to start the next milestone. This way you’re always billing ahead of doing the work.Thanks for viewing, catch me on Twitter @ronrule if you want to keep in touch.

The best way to claim ownership is to have the terms clearly stated within the contract.However, it is imperative that you word your contract properly so that you retain ownership and the contractor has a desire to sign it. As many others have suggested, the most practical way is to state within the contract that everything created belongs to the company as soon as it is created. If you decide to go this route, do not include unneeded terms or jargon that can “bog” down the meat and bones of the contract. An IP provision with immediate assignment is usually enough to cover this topic.You can also require that the contract be signed before the final payment is made. Money is a great motivator in business as it is with everything else in life. Therefore, have your contract state that the code belongs to you upon final payment and both parties agree to this stipulation when signing. I would also require that the code be sent to be at every interval so that you always have possession of it.It is also important that you choose a reputable contractor. If they steal the information from a past client or use information that is widely available, it will be hard to claim the rights to that. A good way to prevent the contractor from selling your code multiple times is to change all passwords and prevent access by anyone except you.I don’t want to make it seem like it is doom and gloom when dealing with all contractors, but it is best to approach each business transaction with a level of scrutiny. Think of it this way, it is better to have the stipulations in place and not need them than need them and not have them. Make sense?Creating a concrete contract is by no means an easy task. This especially holds true if you have never created a contract before and rely on the Internet for your information. Therefore, these waters are best traversed by an experienced and professional attorney. You can find plenty of free documents from a quick google search, but these are standard documents and they rarely capture all of the stipulations that you will need to include.At LawTrades, we can connect you with an attorney who would be more than willing to assist you in creating your contract. These lawyers are not those fresh out of law school who are trying to gain experience in the industry. No, these are lawyers who have “been there and done that” and they know how to get the job done in a cost-effective manner.