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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 met with Greta’s lawyer, who offered to settle for $1 million if they agreed to accept that settlement offer right there after reading the letter.
They had declined the offer, and McDonald had announced that he was going to sue them And oddly enough, he seemed to be pleased at the prospect of doing that…
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