It would have to vacate the premises the moment I saw it. Vacuum cleaner, tennis racket or shotgun. Whatever it takes.
I can’t be too definite here, kambuckta, - I am a spider lover and worked with arachnologists on my most recent book, which is, not surprisingly, on spiders. So my expertise is only as a science writer and spider lover. Having said that - I am not surprised by your observations. I would suspect that most huntsmen in houses are wandering males looking for females. Certainly most of those I see are. You can tell because the ends of their pedipalps (the little leggish things on the front) are engorged with sperm, so it looks like they are wearing little boxing gloves. Once spider guys go hunting females, they are often near the end of their lives and don’t eat, and die. Sad, really.
Any redbacks that you see and identify (or black widows in the States) are females. The males are so tiny that you would only realise they are males if they are on the web of the female, and don’t have long to live then anyway. The females will live on to make egg sacs, hanging around for up to two years.
Just to get rid of nasty rumours: although redbacks, black widows and some other spider males die at the biting of their mates, this is not the case for most male spiders. The two species I have most in my protective custody around the house and watch daily are daddy longlegs (cellar spiders elsewhere - the ones who make webs so are true spiders) and blackhouse spiders (funnel weavers). In both cases, the males stay for weeks with the females and then tend to do the rounds of other females when their first mate makes an egg sac. But they never last very long.
I could go on and on about how wonderful spiders are, but I will restrain myself!
It will be him, not a moult. The moult will have the legs outstretched from his having pulled his legs from it. The body of a moulted skin appears shrivelled, but the legs are outstretched. Looking closely, you can see the holes for each leg as they have been extracted.
I doubt that he is still alive. I have spent many hours distressed at the sight of one of the spiders i have been observing either on the windows or in the house for weeks or months, and got really fond of. Their webs are sacrosanct. Although they may live for a day or two, once their legs go into that folded state, they tend to be on the way out. Unless they are suspended from a thread, in which case they may be starting to moult.
Spider legs move through hydraulics, so if the heart gets weak, then the legs will fold in. You don’t crumpled spiders often outside, because as soon as they are dead, or near dead, the ants come and remove them.