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A Cautionary Tale, Based On A True Story
Tom and Helen Conway had a live-in housekeeper named Greta, who met a labor lawyer online, who said that the Conways had been paying Greta far less than they should have for the past eight years. They were in a meeting at the offices of the law firm of Greta’s lawyer, John McDonald.
McDonald had just presented the Conways with a letter that said that the amount that they owed Greta for back pay, interest and penalties was more than $1,500,000 and offered to settle for $1,000.000 if they agreed to accept that settlement offer right there…
This is the next installment a story that I wrote for FamilyAffaires.com, published in installments, about what can go wrong for you and your family when you hire caregivers privately (or through non-employer “referral agencies” or “registries”), if you do not know and follow the various state and Federal labor laws and tax withholding and reporting laws.
Many people don’t know that when they are “household employers” they are responsible for following virtually all the laws that apply to commercial employers. Those laws include wage and hour laws, minimum wage laws, overtime pay laws, payroll tax withholding laws and more. The only people who win in this highly-sensitized atmosphere are the tax-hungry government bureaucrats who want their tax money, penalties and interest, and the trial lawyers who sue families for huge back pay claims.
Think this all sounds far-fetched? Read and see for yourself: Caregiving: How To Lose Everything By “Saving Money”, published at FamilyAffaires.com
Photo by Horia Varlan 
