If he is depressed you need to deal with that first. When you are in that black hole of nothing ness and thats what depression is you cant see beyond basic needs of eating and sleeping so see to that first, if it is mild try getting him active it may be that you have to go back to throwing the footy around, going fishing, if it is severe then he needs to see a Dr. Once you have moved him on from this place then you can move onto the next bit, you dont need to pay him to do things around the house you are providing for him and thats not cheap so you can have expectations of assistance be it yard work or house work, there are people who believe in tough love and thats fine however if I had tried that with my son who recently had to move back hom he would have topped himself , he had hit rock bottom.... life isnt as easy as it was when we were there age, the same rules dont apply and the cost of losing a life is toooo high. It may be that you have to nurture him arguing make the situation worse be supportive, firm and consistent. Use language like while your home today clean up the kitchen, if you ask can you clean the kitchen you are actually giving him the opportunity to 'not' do it so use clear cut expectation language, I have left a list of jobs for you on the bench, Ill be home at ... to start dinner, prasie what is done even if its minimal at first...you are under no legal obligation to be looking after your son only a moral one, for some perverse reason my kids will not sign up for unemployment when the are in between jobs and yes we carry them but they know its not indefinite and our bills and life come first.

I've recently had to deal with the potential of the exact situation you've spoken of. Except I had to field "such statements as . . . "You're not my dad!", "Whatever.", and "Yeah, yeah, yeah" while still doing whatever he wanted, not caring about what the consequences to the household would be. I have a "zero-tolerance" policy when it comes to defiant behavior in our home. Back when he was still 16 years old I began informing him that if he intended to continue on the path of rebellion, he would have to pursue it alone and away from our home once he reached the age of majority (18). From that point it was a continuous reiteration of his decisions . . . was it helping him, or hurting him. Of course there was a great deal of resistance, personal accountability wasn't a strong suite of his. But I could not allow this young man to believe that he could subject an entire household to his deception and devious behavior. But the most important thing was I would not give up trying to get through to him and redirect his thinking towards personal empowerment rather than the doomed future he was preparing for himself. I also reiterated what he was attracting to himself by believing it was alright for him to continue treating us the was he was. Anyway, we cornered him into signing himself into a youth program which we believed would benefit him greatly. Through the program he graduated ahead of his peers in school, which would have graduated a year before him being that he had been held back due to grades. He joined the Marine Corps. and just received his first promotion from private to private first class. For our young man, I believe part of his motivation was the fact that if he were to continue in his mindlessness, he would in fact be going at it alone, and on his own. The truth of the matter was upon reaching the age of majority (18), our legal obligation to provide for him had been satisfied, and as peers (adult-to-adult) we were not going to subject ourselves to his diregard of our wellbeing, or direction our household was moving in.