So to preface this, I dont actually care about any of this but my wife is pressing on it so...

Also some further background, I live in a one story "condo"? Its a 7 unit building, 3 of the units are privately owned, my landlord owns 2 and the other 2 have separate owners.

Anyway, we have lived in the unit for 2 and a half years. A few months after we moved in, there was a leak from the drain under the tub that caused our spare bedroom to get flooded essentially ruining the carpet in that room. We brought it up to the landlord and 2 weeks later they came and tore out some sections of the wall in our shower and fixed the leak, covered up the holes with clear masking(?) tape, but did nothing about the carpet and told us we should keep the window open and fans blowing to dry everything up. Which is what we did.

Fast forward some months and now we have a leaking faucet in our tub, get that fixed with a few additional holes in the wall covered in tape and an open hole in the ceiling where the shower head protrudes from.

Another year goes by and we have another leak from the tub faucet. We tell the landlord but they say they are too busy right now and they will come fix it when they can.

A few months go by with the leak becoming progressively worse and us asking them to come fix it and them doing nothing about it when one day landlord comes by and wants to put some dye through our drains to identify a water leak(we dont pay water utilities, landlord does) and I explain to them that is unnecessary, I know where the leak is. They fix it the next day after cutting a few more holes out of my shower wall. It was a hot water leak so even though we dont pay water, our hot water heater has been constantly running costing us on our natural gas bill. Landlord refuses to compensate.

None of that actually bothered me too much, not enough to care anyway.

But a couple of weeks ago as I was getting home from work one night my wife smelled gas outside and the police and fire department had to come and investigate and we had to evacuate our house for the night and during that time my wife had asked the county sheriff who handled the situation how to deal with all the unfinished holes in our shower wall and he told her we should refuse to pay rent until they were fixed.

Well, Landlord came by while I was at work to collect the rent and my wife told them that we wouldn't pay them until the work was finished. I'm not entirely sure what exchange of words happened because my wife is foreign and doesnt always fully understand what is being said especially in heated or quick discussions but I know they mentioned eviction.

We haven't documented any of this, we pay cash monthly for our rent so there is no record of transactions, only our initial lease agreement, so I have pretty much assumed were screwed.

We live in Montana if that helps.

Does anybody have any insight as to how to handle this situation? I'm still at work so haven't been able to take any action.

What kind of lawyer should I seek out?