Of Interest
The New Maryland Trust Act Allows Spouses To Protect Marital Assets From Creditors After Death While Still Avoiding The Estate Tax.
Only married couples may own property jointly as tenants by the entireties. Whenever possible, it is advisable for them to do so. This is because this form of ownership gives each spouse full rights to the property, including the right of survivorship, but does not allow creditors to seize the property if the property is used as collateral for a loan and the spouse who put up the property as collateral dies without paying off the loan. Traditionally, one drawback to this estate-planning appr...
Website Compliance Under the Americans With Disabilities Act (ADA)
Recently, there have been a plethora of “professional plaintiffs” filing lawsuits against clients under the ADA based upon “website compliance;” this is a follow-up by the same professional plaintiffs who filed dozens of ADA lawsuits last winter against some of our clients. The purpose of this article is to advise you to ensure that you ask your web designer if your website is compliant with the ADA. Note: This article does not reflect compliance standards under local laws. For example,...
Secure Act 2.0: Changes To Retirement Plans Are Coming Your Way
If you are a business owner or an employee, your retirement plans may have changed following Congress’s bipartisan $1.7 trillion spending bill, Secure Act 2.0. Inside the bill, which is headed to the President for signing, are provisions directed toward increasing retirement savings and access to 401(k) and other individual retirement accounts for low- and middle-income workers. Some of the key retirement provisions of the legislation include: Starting in 2025, many businesses must enr...
IS YOUR INVESTMENT IN BANKRUPTCY? WHAT IS CLAWBACK AND SHOULD YOU BE CONCERNED? DON’T THROW IN THE TOWEL IF CLAIMS ARE MADE FOR CLAWBACK
Giving Back What You Got? Federal bankruptcy and state insolvency laws permit a bankrupt or insolvent company to “claw back” or recover payments made to investors and third parties. Most understand bankruptcy laws – but beware that all states have some kind of “insolvency laws” which is similar to bankruptcy laws but only applicable to a particular state’s proceedings. Both procedures claw back money and assets in these cases for a variety of reasons. Most important is that, i...
D.C. Wage Payment: Pay the Right Amount and Stay Out of Trouble
If you are an employer in the District of Columbia, your employees are owed certain compensation. To avoid wage disputes and substantial fines, make sure your employees have been properly paid for their work. How much and when do you need to pay your employees? Under the District of Columbia Minimum Wage Act, most employees within the District of Columbia are protected and must be paid the minimum wage. The minimum wage in the District increased to $16.10 per hour on June 1, 2022. Ti...
EMPLOYMENT HANDBOOKS → EMPLOYMENT CLAIM INSURANCE
Clients are overwhelmed with government regulations in business operations and oftentimes overlook one important tool that can provide some insurance against many employee claims: the employment handbook. With the “welcome mat” that most courts give employees for just about any grievance against employers, the employment handbook can be a valuable defense shield against many of these lawsuits. When weighed against the significant dollars that a single employee lawsuit can cost, the employme...
Federal and State Overtime Rules – Don’t Get Snagged!
Federal and local law regulates overtime pay and hourly wage minimums of certain classes of employees; other laws require employees paid either twice per month or every two weeks. There are severe penalties for not following these laws. Do you comply? Are you exempt from overtime laws based upon the status of the employee? If you pay employees hourly, the employees must be paid overtime. Even if you have employees on a salary basis, their classification as “managerial” or “overtime-exemp...
Paid Sick and Safe Leave Now Required In Montgomery County, MD
If you are a business owner in Montgomery County, MD and have more than one employee who works in the County, you must provide your employee(s) with paid sick and safe leave unless: the employee does not have a regular work schedule, contacts the employer for work assignments and schedules work within 48 hours after contact, has no obligation to work for the employer unless he/she initiates the contact AND is not employed by a temporary placement agency; the employee regularly works less than ni...
Legal Tools all Employers Should Consider: Importance of Employment Releases and Arbitration Clauses
Quite some time ago, the young attorney mentioned to his mentor that “the laws must have been so much easier on business when you were young.” Replied his mentor, “sure, that’s what I said to my mentor!” For employers, the law keeps moving away from the employer to the employee. However, there are still a few tools left that all employers should consider. These tools are the employment release forms and carefully-drawn employment handbooks containing mandatory arbitration clauses. ...
Limiting Employer Liability: The DC Wage Theft Prevention Amendment Act of 2014
This past DC Council Session, the Council passed The Wage Theft Prevention Amendment Act of 2014 (“Act”); following the Congressional review period, the Act became effective last year. The Act amended several DC wage and hour laws, greatly increased employer obligations and expanded the potential for employer liability.1 Accordingly, employers must review this article to learn how to mitigate liability under this new law. Generally, the Act requires employers to document pay for al...