Are you paying your staff for the hours they’re available to you but not actually working?
It’s one of the most misunderstood areas of household employment in New York. The rules apply for both federal and state level, they’re specific, and you might owe money if you don’t get the law right.
Live-in household staff in New York have to be paid for on-call hours if you can interrupt their personal time whenever you want. Overtime starts at 44 hours a week rather than the federal 40, under the New York Domestic Workers’ Bill of Rights.
The state minimum wage of $16.50 an hour is the bottom end for any on-call time you have to pay. We see that most disputes between families and household staff come back to vague on-call expectations rather than personality clashes. We’ve been been placing butlers, nannies, and domestic couples in New York households since 2015.
Laurine Mallet, co-founder of Morgan & Mallet, sees this regularly with US clients. “A lot of families assume that because someone lives on their property, that person is always on the clock. Or the opposite. That they’re never on the clock unless they’re doing something visible. Neither is right. New York in particular protects domestic workers more than federal law does.”
Do you have to pay household staff for on-call time?
On-call time has to be paid if the employee can’t really use it for themselves. Under the federal Fair Labor Standards Act, employees who are “engaged to wait” are paid for the time, while employees “waiting to be engaged” generally aren’t.
The difference is really down to how much freedom the employee has during the standby period. This means areas like, whether they can leave the property, how often they get asked to work, and how far from your home they’re allowed to go.
“That difference between ‘engaged to wait’ and ‘waiting to be engaged’ is where every conversation with a family starts,” Laurine says. “If you’re asking your butler to stay on your property in case something comes up, that’s one thing. Telling him he can go home but to keep his phone on is something completely different.”
Aa a general rule, the more you’re tying the employee down, the more likely you have to pay for it. Required to stay on-site? That would be paid. Needed to respond within five minutes? Probably paid. Free to go home, watch a film, and call you back if needed? Probably not paid.
What’s the overtime rule for live-in household staff in New York?
Live-in domestic workers in New York get overtime at 1.5x the regular rate after 44 hours a week, not the federal 40. The 44-hour threshold comes from the New York Domestic Workers’ Bill of Rights, which overrides the federal FLSA exemption that lets employers skip overtime for permanent live-in staff. Non-live-in domestic workers in New York still get overtime after 40 hours.
That changes the math on standby and sleep time. Every on-call hour you have to pay for gets added to the 44-hour weekly total. If a live-in housekeeper works 38 “active” hours and 8 paid standby hours, she crosses the line and earns time-and-a-half for the last two.
New York also has a “spread of hours” rule that catches a lot of employers off guard. If a domestic worker’s day stretches more than 10 hours from start to finish, you owe them an extra hour at minimum wage on top of normal pay. It doesn’t matter how many of those hours were active work. An early breakfast service plus late-evening dinner standby on the same day puts you straight into this rule.
The New York minimum wage is $16.50 an hour (NYC, Long Island, and Westchester County as of 2026). Any on-call hours you have to pay for can’t drop below that.
“In the US, the rules in New York are not the same as in Florida or California,” Morgan Richez, co-founder of Morgan & Mallet, says. “In California, labor laws are very strict. They are pro-labor. In New York, they’re more pro-company.” More pro-company doesn’t mean your staff have no rights, though. New York’s domestic worker rules are still some of the strongest in the country.
Do I have to pay a live-in nanny for the hours she sleeps?
A live-in nanny’s sleeping hours don’t have to be paid if you and she have signed a written sleep exclusion agreement that meets federal law (29 CFR §785.22). The sleep block has to be scheduled, she has to be able to get at least 5 hours uninterrupted, and you have to give her decent sleeping quarters.
Every time she has to get out of bed to deal with a child, those minutes are paid at her regular rate. The exclusion only covers the hours she actually slept through. Without a written sleep exclusion in the contract, you could end up paying for every hour she’s on the premises.
In practice a live-in nanny on $30 an hour with a valid sleep exclusion doesn’t get paid for the night. But if your toddler wakes her up three times, those three calls are paid at $30 an hour. If her weekly total tips over 44 hours, the rate goes to time-and-a-half.
“What I always tell families is to be honest about how many nights a week the nanny will actually be woken up,” Laurine says. “If your child wakes up three times a night, every night, a sleep exclusion agreement isn’t going to save you any money. Build those hours into the package from the start. It’s cheaper than the argument later.”
Here’s a recent placement that shows how this gets handled when the work crosses borders. A New York lawyer came to Morgan & Mallet needing a summer nanny for her two-year-old, splitting nine weeks in the UK and two weeks in France.
“I’m a US citizen, I’m not going to employ the candidate in Europe,” she told Laurine. “I don’t want to manage the payroll just for summer.” Morgan & Mallet placed a bilingual French nanny who’d just finished a job with another family in Europe, signed her onto a UK contract (because most of the days were spent there), and ran everything in between.
The lawyer got one monthly invoice. She didn’t touch any of the European employment work. “It was really easy with her,” she told Laurine afterwards.
Is a live-in domestic couple on duty 24 hours a day?
No. A live-in domestic couple is not legally on duty around the clock just because they sleep on your property. Both federal and New York law require real off-duty time, free from your control, even when staff live on-site. The test is whether you can interrupt their personal time whenever you feel like it.
If the couple is just sleeping in the cottage with no obligation unless something blows up, that isn’t usually paid time, as long as the contract says so clearly. The moment they’re expected to check security systems, respond to alarms, or anything that has anything to do with your property during the night, those hours are paid standby.
Second homes make this even more important. Most of the US families we place couples with own more than one property. If your estate couple keeps the Hamptons house while you’re in Manhattan for eight months a year, what are they actually doing in those months? If they’re keeping the house live, taking deliveries, dealing with contractors and generally being the human presence on-site, that’s not really free time.
“In the US, demand for domestic couples is very strong for holiday homes,” Morgan says. “For security reasons, it’s better to hire a domestic couple, because you’ve got a human in the property when the owner isn’t there.” That security value is real, but it’s also a job, and the contract has to say which hours of the day the couple is on the hook and which they’re not.
It’s incredibly important to be clear on this, as you can probably see there are many areas where ambiguity can happen.
Yacht couples are worth talking about for this kind of role. “People who used to work as a couple in the yachting industry are the best of the best,” Morgan says. “After 30 or 35, they prefer to work on property because yachting is so busy. You’re never at home, completely busy for three months.”
Yacht-trained couples come into property work already used to being on call and used to running clean watch schedules, which is exactly the structure a New York compliance attorney will want to see in the contract.
Domestic couples are also the hardest US role to fill at the right level. “In the US, you need to pay at least $150,000 a year. That’s the minimum,” Morgan says. A good contract will be clear about the daily off-duty window of time, the weekly rest day, what standby duties there are and what they pay, and the line between an emergency call (paid) and just sleeping in the cottage at night (not paid).
Do I have to pay my butler for evenings and weekends?
Evenings and weekends count as paid standby time when your butler is expected to stay on your property, stay within a short radius, or respond to your instructions outside scheduled hours.
Even informal “be around” expectations can turn into paid on-call hours in the eyes of the law. The pattern is important because occasional contact is one thing, a standing expectation that he’ll be available is another.
“The butler absorbs a lot,” Laurine says. “If the client isn’t happy about the food, he’s probably not going to tell the chef. He’s going to tell the butler, because the butler is in the room. They get called on Saturday evening to organize Sunday lunch for twelve people. That’s part of the role, but it needs to be a defined, paid part of the role. The best butler contracts we draft have an on-call rate, a cap on standby hours per week, and a clear rest day.”
Butler salaries in New York are at the top of the Morgan & Mallet US range. The agency’s 2025/26 Household Staff Salaries Annual Report puts butlers in the US at $90,000 to $180,000+, with New York placements at the higher end of this. Because these numbers are high, six figure claims could happen if a contract isn’t clear.
Morgan, Morgan & Mallet’s co-founder adds something else about what candidates expect now. “People want to enjoy life, have a private life, get the full weekend off when the principal isn’t there. The candidates have a bit of the power. It’s very important not to be too demanding. You need to attract people.” Vague expectations of when your staff should be on call aren’t just bad legally. They could also lose you the candidates you actually want.
What are the penalties for not paying on-call hours in New York?
A New York household employer who doesn’t pay on-call hours that should have been paid faces three things, a wage claim that can go back up to six years under New York Labor Law (the federal FLSA limit is two), a Department of Labor audit if the employee files a complaint, and a placement that almost always ends. New York courts can also add liquidated damages equal to the unpaid amount, which doubles the bill.
Six years is a lot longer than the federal two, which is what makes a New York wage claim so expensive. A butler claiming unpaid evenings over five years is a lot of money.
Department of Labor investigations are also easy for an employee to start. A New York domestic worker can file a complaint without a lawyer, and one complaint can open a full audit of how you run your household payroll.
“Disputes are traced back to unclear pay terms more often than personality conflict,” Eric Rios, recruiter at Morgan & Mallet, says of US placements. “Written wage structures reduce tension before it starts.” Replacing a butler or estate couple takes months, costs money, and breaks the trust you’ve spent time building.
What should a New York household employment contract include for on-call work?
A clear New York contract for household staff covers regular working hours, what on-call expectations are and rate, sleep exclusion terms for live-in staff, the 44-hour overtime threshold, the spread-of-hours rule, off-duty periods, and an NDA for high-profile clients.
Workers’ comp insurance is necessary no matter how many hours your staff work. If they work 20 hours a week or more, you also have to enroll them in New York’s Paid Family Leave program.
Here’s what we make sure is in every New York contract we draft:
- Regular working hours and a clear definition of the workweek
- Standby and on-call expectations, with hours per week and required response time
- The on-call rate, if it’s different from the regular hourly rate
- A sleep exclusion clause for live-in employees, and the conditions that make it valid
- The overtime rate (1.5x the regular rate after 44 hours for live-in workers in New York)
- The spread of hours rule, for days that stretch more than 10 hours
- Off-duty periods, defining clearly when the employee is free of all work obligations
- How hours get recorded
- An NDA, layered if the family is high-profile
Something else on NDAs. Morgan & Mallet’s standard candidate contract already includes an NDA with the agency. For high-profile clients, a second NDA gets signed directly between the candidate and the family. “We’ve got a really important client we’ve worked with since 2019,” Laurine says. “As soon as we place someone in their property, the candidate also signs an NDA in our contract for the client.” Two layers, one purpose and the family is protected whether or not the agency is in the loop on a future dispute.
Morgan our co-founder goes further on writing everything down. “When you say everything to the candidate at the beginning, the good and the bad, you can make sure when he gets the job he’s going to stay for a long time. He knew everything. He can’t say, ‘I didn’t know about this.’ If you try to hide something, after a month the candidate doesn’t appreciate it and resigns.” On-call expectations are exactly the thing employers most often leave vague. They’re also what most often causes the placement not to work.
“My strong advice to any family hiring in New York is to use a specialist employment attorney who knows domestic worker law,” Laurine says. There’s a catch, though. “Even when clients find a lawyer,” Morgan says, “the lawyer is usually not specialized in domestic workers. That specialty barely exists.” Most US employment lawyers know the FLSA and the state code, but they don’t see enough domestic worker cases to really see where issues can come up. Morgan & Mallet works with attorneys who are experienced working with domestic staffing situations.
Can I use a payroll service instead of being the household employer myself?
Yes. A household employer-of-record service lets a third party act as the legal employer of your household staff, taking the contract, payroll, tax, and compliance work off your plate. You get one monthly invoice instead of running US household payroll yourself. Morgan & Mallet offers this for placements in the US, UK, and France. France gets the most requests. The US is second.
How it works in the US is that the candidate is employed by Morgan & Mallet, not by you. We arrange the contract, payroll, pay slips, holidays, sickness, and all the admin involved. You get one monthly invoice that covers everything.
“The candidate has any question about pay, holidays, schedules, and they call us straight,” Laurine says. “If there’s something that needs to change, we sort it out. The client doesn’t have to be in the middle of it.” This works better for private individuals than for family offices. Family offices already do this kind of admin in-house. For a New York principal who’d rather not become a household-employment law expert, payroll-managed staff is the simplest way through the on-call rules.
There’s also the reputation side, which matters more for US clients than anywhere else. “When you’re a billionaire or a celebrity, being in direct contact with your staff can be risky,” Morgan says. “Staff can ask for extra bonuses because they know you have the money. If there’s a dispute and the media gets involved, your image can be damaged, even if the claims aren’t true. In the US, if the media talks about a domestic worker case in your property, your image is destroyed. Doesn’t matter if it’s right or not.” Putting an agency between you and your staff is also putting one between you and the headlines.
What are the legal references for New York household employers?
The rules on New York household employment are in the federal Fair Labor Standards Act, the New York Domestic Workers’ Bill of Rights, New York’s Minimum Wage Order for domestic workers, and the guidance from the US Department of Labor and the New York Department of Labor.
- Fair Labor Standards Act, 29 CFR Part 785. Federal rules on hours worked, on-call time, and the sleep exclusion for live-in domestic employees.
- New York Domestic Workers’ Bill of Rights (Labor Law §§ 2, 161, 167, 170, 175). State protections including the 44-hour overtime threshold, the rest day, and paid leave.
- 12 NYCRR Part 142. New York’s Minimum Wage Order covering domestic workers.
- New York Department of Labor (dol.ny.gov). State enforcement agency.
- US Department of Labor, Wage and Hour Division (dol.gov/agencies/whd). Federal compliance resources.
How do I hire household staff in New York the right way?
To hire household staff in New York without falling breaking the rules, work with an agency that deals with the search for the right candidate, the contract, and the payroll structure together.
Morgan & Mallet places household staff for families across New York City, the Hamptons, Westchester County, and the rest of the state from a large database of vetted candidates (drawn from 200,000+ total applicants). We work out of New York, Los Angeles, Miami, London, Paris, Geneva, and Dubai.
Our placement success rate on butler and nanny roles is 96%, based on the 2025/26 Annual Report.
To talk through a New York hire and the contract structure that goes with it, call Morgan & Mallet on +1 (646)965-2308 or get in touch online.
Frequently asked questions
Is on-call time always paid at the regular hourly rate?
No. On-call hours you have to pay for can’t drop below New York minimum wage ($16.50 an hour in NYC, Long Island, and Westchester as of 2026), but they don’t have to match the employee’s regular rate unless your contract says so. A lot of household contracts set a lower on-call rate for inactive standby, with active calls paid at the standard rate. The split has to be agreed in writing before the work starts.
My butler works from home. Do my evening texts count as on-call time?
They can. If your butler is expected to read messages and act on them outside his scheduled hours, even informally, a court can treat those evenings as paid on-call time. Occasional contact is one thing. A standing expectation that he’ll be available is another. If evenings and weekends are part of the role, write them into the contract with an on-call rate and a weekly cap.
How far back can a New York household employee claim unpaid on-call wages?
Six years under New York Labor Law, against two years under the federal FLSA. If a court finds the employer liable, it can add liquidated damages the same as the unpaid amount, which doubles the bill.
Do I need workers’ compensation insurance for my household staff in New York?
Yes. New York requires workers’ comp for domestic employees no matter how many hours they work. If they work 20 hours a week or more, you also have to enroll them in New York’s Paid Family Leave program. Both apply whether the staff member lives in or comes in daily.
What’s the simplest way to set up on-call hours in a household contract?
Write everything down before the job starts. Hours of standby expected per week. The rate for inactive standby. How the employee gets contacted. Response time. What tasks can be requested. And a clear definition of off-duty time. A written, signed agreement before the work starts is the single best thing you can do to hopefully stop any disputes later.
Sources: Fair Labor Standards Act (29 CFR Part 785), New York Domestic Workers’ Bill of Rights, New York Labor Law, 12 NYCRR Part 142, US Department of Labor Wage and Hour Division, New York Department of Labor, Morgan & Mallet 2025/26 Household Staff Salaries Annual Report.
This article is general information about New York and federal household employment law as of 2026, not legal advice. Domestic worker law changes regularly. Talk to a licensed New York employment attorney before drafting a household employment contract.
