Even though property acquired during marriage is presumed to be community property, for property tax change in ownership purposes the Los Angeles County Property Tax Assessor’s Office believes otherwise.  Fortunately, the Assessment Appeals Board strongly disagreed with the Assessor.

Spouses domiciled in California and owning California real property as community property, either directly or indirectly through an entity, have a reasonable expectation that the property tax consequences arising from their dealings with that property will be governed by their status as ...

On Tuesday, a U.S. District Court judge in Texas issued a nationwide preliminary injunction delaying the U.S. Department of Labor rule that would have dramatically increased the minimum salary threshold to qualify as exempt from overtime on December 1^st.  The rule would have raised the annual salary required for exempt status from $23,660 to $47,476, which was expected to result in millions of employees becoming eligible for overtime pay because their salary would not meet the new threshold.   The judge’s decision stated that the Obama administration overstepped its authority by ...

QUESTION:  I am getting ready to close my receivership and distribute the funds in the estate to the two parties.  I have just learned that the Social Security number one of the parties gave me is not his.  What should I do?

ANSWER:  As a receiver you are the agent of the court.  As such, you must not be a party to any conduct that may not be legal.  You should bring this issue to the court’s attention by filing a request for instructions as to what you should do with the funds under your custody and whether you should notify the IRS and FTB about what is clearly a violation of the law by one of the parties to ...

Just kidding.  It may not be fun, but the new Form I-9 issued by the United States Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) may be used immediately. Finalized on November 14, 2016, the new version of the Form is available here https://www.uscis.gov/i-9 . Employers will not be permitted to use the old version of Form I-9 (dated 03/08/2013) as of January 22, 2017.   The new version asks for “other last names used” rather than “other names used,” and streamlines certification for certain foreign nationals.  Other changes include: the addition of prompts to ensure information is ...

Existing regulations establish heat illness prevention standards for outdoor workers.  The regulations include requirements for providing sufficient drinking water at no charge to the employee, allowing for recovery or “cool down” periods, providing shade when the temperature exceeds 80 degrees Fahrenheit, and creating written safety standards.Senate Bill 1167 expands California’s heat illness regulations to protect indoor employees.  The bill requires the Division of Occupational Safety and Health to propose by July 1, 2019, a heat illness and injury prevention ...

QUESTION:  I am a receiver in a case where the court issued an injunction staying all litigation and creditor action against the entity and assets in receivership. A secured creditor wants to foreclose on one of the estate’s assets. Can it do that? What is the procedure for the creditor to obtain relief from the stay?

ANSWER: The first thing to remember is that receiverships are not bankruptcy cases. Too often, parties to receivership cases analogize to bankruptcy proceedings. While this is understandable, e, especially given the local rules in some courts which provide the receiver ...

Effective January 1, 2017, Assembly Bill 1843 prohibits hiring-related inquiries concerning juvenile convictions or from using information regarding juvenile court actions or custodial detentions as a factor in determining any condition of employment.  The new law expands upon recent legislation that restricted the use of expunged, sealed or dismissed juvenile convictions, and is representative of a nationwide trend of restricting inquiries regarding prior convictions.

This blog is presented under protest by the law firm of Ervin Cohen & Jessup LLP.  It is essentially the ...

QUESTION:   If I discover possible criminal wrongdoing, am I, as receiver, required to report it to authorities?

ANSWER:

The answer depends on whether you are a federal receiver or state court receiver. 18 U.S.C. § 3057(a) provides: “Any judge, receiver, or trustee having reasonable grounds for believing that any violation under chapter 9 of this title or other laws of the United States relating to insolvent debtors, receiverships or reorganization plans has been committed, or that an investigation should be had in connection therewith, shall report to the appropriate United ...

Continuing a recent legislative trend, Senate Bill 1001 expands existing prohibitions regarding unfair immigration-related practices.  Specifically, this bill amends the California Labor Code to provide a civil remedy for an applicant or employee against any unfair immigration-related practice as defined by Labor Code section 1019.  Such “unfair immigration-related practices” include an employer requesting more or different documents than required under federal law for verification purposes, using the federal E-Verify system to check the status of a person at a time ...

The Wage Equality Act of 2016 (Senate Bill 1063) expands California’s Equal Pay Act to target race and ethnicity-related wage differentials. This bill picks up where last year’s Equal Pay Act (which bolstered prohibitions on gender-based pay differentials) left off by adding a new Labor Code provision precluding wage differentials based on race or ethnicity.  Under the Wage Equality Act, employers will be required to demonstrate that a reasonably-applied factor accounts for any pay differential between employees of different races or ethnicities for doing substantially ...