Cooking, Cleaning, Beer Runs Cost Her Ex-Roommate $6,600

For eight years, he did the fixing up and she did the cleaning and cooking and made the beer runs. Then they broke up.

Five years later, an appeals court has agreed that Harlan Ray must give Linda Walsh $6,600 in housekeeping pay.

“This opens the door for an argument that true roommates, not even boyfriend-girlfriend, could end up with the same results,” said Ray’s attorney, Daniel Berkos.

Walsh and her two sons moved into Ray’s home after they met in 1979. Ray’s two children stayed in the rural Reedsburg house half of the time.

The couple broke up in 1987. Two years later, Walsh, 43, sued for housekeeping pay. Ray, a 41-year-old dairy worker, sued for support that he provided her children. His request was denied.

The 4th District Court of Appeals on Thursday upheld a ruling that said the part-time waitress and food plant worker deserved a share of the increased value of Ray’s home, although Ray paid for the home improvements and maintained the couple’s cars.

The court ruling said: “Chores and groceries for a household of up to six people, three of them being Ray and his children, may readily amount to a considerable investment in time and money.”

During the trial, Walsh’s lawyer, Katherine Campbell, told jurors that her client deserved at least half of the $16,500 that Ray’s home had appreciated during the partnership. The attorney acknowledged that Walsh had not helped Ray and others work on a garage, carport, shed, roofing and siding.

But, Campbell said, “she contributed to those buildings by being there, by cooking lunches and cooking supper for the guys, and putting coals in the grill; making beer runs . . . being sure everybody had something to drink; cleaning up after everybody.”