I think tenants rights are a good thing. But being unable to remove someone who is possibly crazy and living in the same house as your children is also a good thing.
In an apartment building, the tenant is not living with you. If they go bonkers, they might destroy the unit, but they aren’t an immediate danger to the owners nor their family.
When I hire a nanny, I’m effectively asking someone to join my family and be an integral part of it. If that person is untrustworthy, I need to be able to distance myself from them immediately.
This is where the application of the law creates an interesting situation. How exactly is a fair way to legislate this sort of thing? Should there be a ban on homeowners for doing this - it certainly can be made illegal to hire in exchange for pom and board.
Should landlords have the right to evict immediately? I am definitely against that, I think a 30 day notice minimum should be mandatory.
Should there be a special distinction of this type of tenancy? I think this adds a lot of vagary to the rental market. There are many situations in which the renters are living in someone’s home; in the area I live we have what are called English basements. I think this adds too much ambiguity to the rights of tenants.
I think the laws as they stand are fine, and if someone wants to exercise such poor judgement as to hire a “nanny” off of craigslist, not do any sort of thorough dackground check (I do not consider just calling 2 references very thorough), not pay the nanny anything other than room and board; then the reason they find themselves in a bind is not because of a deficiency in the law. “Stupid”(for lack of a better term) people will find each other and make each other miserable no matter what kind of laws are enacted. The system we have for landlord/tenant relations is not what is flawed here in my opinion.
You’re already ceding a lot of power to an employer working in their home. When and what they eat, when they get time off, if they get time off, etc, etc, on endlessly. Now you want them to be allowed to fire them AND put them out into the street without notice of any kind?
No thanks. These positions are already notorious for hiring undocumented aliens, taking their passports and threatening them with deportation while under paying them, charging them for housing, and working them like slaves. No, they most assuredly should not be able to put them out without notice.
And anyone hiring for such a position, who doesn’t know the law, gets what they deserve.
If the person is doing something illegal, then immediate eviction would make sense. I do not know what the law is in that situation. There was no probable cause established that the nanny was breaking any laws. The nanny may have been breaking all sorts of laws, unfortunately I do not see where any probable cause for an arrest for anything was established.
I feel that that family recklessly put themselves in a situation where it would be nearly impossible for the law to intervene if there was difficult to prove misconduct. I do not feel that any laws should be changed to try to accommodate people who take these kinds of risks; by doing so what you would be doing is restricting the rights of other people needlessly. As a few posters have mentioned, there are ways to easily avoid this situation altogether and possibly there were better ways to handle it after the fact.
In my opinion, the 30 days notice should be applicable if either party was planning to discontinue employment. “This is my 30 days notice that as of August 1st, I will no longer be working for you.” She watches the kids for the 30 days, then moves out. If she quit without notice (as she’s saying she did), then the housing should cease, too. If the family fires her and doesn’t doesn’t give 30 days notice (“We’re ending your employment as of August 1st”), then they should pay for some sort of living arrangement for those 30 days.
There should probably be some sort of requirement that you have to give the person X amount of severance, where X is enough to afford a cheap motel for a month and to be allowed to leave some of their things behind for a month.
It pains me tpo admit this, but I’m starting to change my mind on this. I’m not coming to the nannies side here, but the contract really does seem like indentured servitude. If that’s what you offer, you should expect no one but the crazy and desperate to apply. It reminds me of those diplomats who basically bring slaves with them and are shocked to find that that sort of thing is frowned upon in the States. However the family are not wealthy foreigners, so this is what they got.
If you want a nanny, be prepared to offer reasonable wages and hours, and go through a reputable agency.
There aren’t any good guys here. The nanny is a litigious nutjob, but the family seems to have wanted something for nothing.
The thing you don’t seem to get is that none of that has anything to do with the problem here. The problem is simply that they hired a live-in nanny. It wouldn’t matter if they paid her or she came from a reputable company. They still have a live-in worker who no longer has a job but is free to roam in their private home. According to you, there should be no other way to remove them then to follow basic tenancy laws which mandate allowing her to stay in the home for extended period.
I don’t see why it shouldn’t be extremely easy to say that, if you are a live-in worker in someone’s home, you are not a tenant. The relationship between you and the homeowner is not that a tenant/landlord.
If there need to be special arrangements for this situation, fine. But it should not include being required to keep the unemployed stranger in your home, having access to your kitchen to the point that you have to lock your fridge. If I have to provide lodging, fine. But not in my home.
It just doesn’t make sense to me why you think is okay.
I have said it twice in this thread already, but I will say it again for you. Legally she is a tenant with all the protections and rights of a tenant. There is no argument to the contrary, even from their own lawyer.
These tenancy laws have been developed over many years and as far as I know are standard in the developed world. As far as I know, the US actually has an easier eviction process than many European countries, I know specifically about France, England, and Portugal - but I think the basics are the same all over.
My comments are more focused on what is practical as a legal remedy to the particular situation in the OP. Legally their are measures to remove someone from the home who is a danger, there are also legal methods to remove someone with proper notice. I do not think that there is any deficiency in the law regarding this situation.
Practically, the question is what is the best way for the law to do what is fair and right but also practical. Sometimes compromises and balance are necessary for practical matters. If the laws are changed to give landlords more power, I believe it will have far more negatives than positives and give landlords more ability to abuse the power they have. The laws were developed to intentionally make eviction at a moment’s notice difficult or impossible; I think this is better because it encourages landlords to conduct due diligence beforehand and allows tenants to have some reasonable security from being threatened with eviction based upon unreasonable demands by landlords; for example a landlord could easily threaten a tenant with eviction if a pipe broke and they didn’t pay for it - I could go on with many other examples, but I would rather just say that this, and many other examples are why the laws have been created as they are.
I think it is important that this nanny be considered a tenant in order to prevent landlords from using a different definition of tenant in order to circumvent the rights of their tenants when it is convenient or profitable for them to do so.
I mention some of the circumstances surrounding the hiring of the nanny to illustrate the fact that these situations can be avoided by reasonable people most of the time - so the laws in place are not causing widespread harm.
Ultimately, these are the laws in place and are simple and well known. If they wanted to have an arrangement with the nanny other than providing tenancy, they should have at least made some sort of contract, or had something signed that made that the agreement; barring that, there would be no reason that the nanny would expect anything different. They could have done a 3 month contract to be renewed after a certain period of time, but for some reason they chose not to do that - the family just sort of chose to fly by the seat of their pants.
Furthermore, if the family was in danger, their are legal methods for removing the nanny, however, the authorities were not convinced that there was any reason to remove the nanny other than through proper eviction procedures.