Legal Question in Construction Law in South Dakota

home building

We picked a builder to build our home, they came in 40,000 over our budget. They had already purchased building permit and staked out building site. We paid $2500 for a down payment and $2500 for a house plan. We have nothing for our money and now they are billing us an additional $2000 for permit and staking(a significant up charge from what it cost them). They will only give us the plan if we pay the bill and even if we get the plan we can't use it, as it is copyrighted to there name. We think they could put a mechanics lean on our property for not paying there bill. They will not give us anything back and if we go to another builder we can't use the plan or else risk being sued. We really don't know what are rights are, we did not sign a contract with them. They are blaming us for over budget and there solution is to cut many things to get down to an acceptable number for us. They will not allow us to even go to suppliers to make changes unless they are present. They want more money to go back to the suppliers to redo everything. We feel we have been mislead and even lied to along the way. We have also missed a lot of work with appointments with them trying to resolve this fairly. Any suggestions would be great.

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