Nanny starting! Short-term, part-time... but help me with pay logistics, please!!

[lilgreen]

We have a 'nanny' starting next week. We only needed someone for 4-5 hours a day, 5 days a week for 2.5 months and we were lucky to find a wonderful older lady who has nannied for decades and is even a grandmother. Her husband works f/t so she is thrilled to have somewhere regular to go to and to make some extra money. So, it's rather casual. BUT, how do we pay her? It would be good to have it legit so that we can write it off in our taxes. Does that mean we need to get her to sign some sort of contract? What if she's sick? Do we pay her even when she's sick? Or what happens when our kids are sick and I stay home for a day or two? ...Does she lose out on the pay that she's expecting? My husband thinks that we just pay her for hours worked, but I feel like that might advantage of her flexibility a little too much. What if they have a doctor's appointment so we end the day a couple of hours short? If it makes any difference, we're in Canada.

These are all things I never thought of until just these past few days when the reality of it all began to set in.

Wise WOHMs, help me clear this up so we're all happy and so we all feel good about this situation.

Thanks!!

[HappyMommy2]

Definitely make it official. Draft up a contract and have her look it over. Make any changes you agree on, and then both of you should sign it, and both keep a copy.

I drafted one up by googling "nanny contract" or something similar. I also added some parenting things I thought were important.

[lilgreen]

Thanks for this, HappyMommy! I will certainly do up a contract.

I've googled it and have found a few templates, but I still haven't figured out what to do about sick days and stat holidays. If she were long term and f/t, then I'd do it the 'proper' way, but I'm not sure what the protocol is for someone who is short-term, p/t.

Thanks!

[Evan&Anna's_Mom]

I think you should approach it as if this were a continueing relationship. After all, you never know what the future holds. I always pay for state holidays, since I get paid as well. For sick days, we (nanny and I) agreed that she could take up to 10 days a year as paid sick time, so maybe you should offer 1 per month? For days when child was sick, my nanny usually got extra pay if they were available for extra hours so I could still go to work. one of the advantages of having a nanny is that they can still care for a sick kid. When I was sick and stayed home I would still have nanny come so I could take of myself without having to worry about child. Given the short-term nature of the contract, I wouldn't feel it necessary to offer paid vacation time. For shortened hours, I always paid if it were my "fault" that they were shorter -- e.g. I chose to take child to the doctor instead of sending the nanny. If the nanny needed time off for a doctor's visit, then generally I didn't pay for that time.

My overall working theory was that if it wasn't the nanny's "fault" the time was different, then her pay shouldn't suffer. That just seemed fair to me.

[lilgreen]

Thank you, Evan&Anna's mom! You've laid it out perfectly in a way that I can feel good and fair about it all. Yay!! Thank you!!

[MelW]

http://www.wstcoast.org/ has links with Canadian info. You can call them for legal details about hiring a nanny (like vacation pay, CPP, taxes, etc) to make sure that your contract is legit.

HTH