The Jon & Kate Plus 8 Disaster

If you have a TV, it's almost impossible that you haven't seen TLC's Jon & Kate Plus 8 or heard about their recent marital problems and media woes. If you haven't, google it, because I'm not touching that train wreck with a ten-foot poll. I've followed the show since the beginning, and I have very strong feelings about this situation and I don't want to jump on my soapbox about it... so I'm attempting to take a more objective, legal angle on the discussion.

I stumbled across this really interesting article on Examiner.com, written by Sammy Gomez. While the articles doesn't get into much detail about the legalities of child "stars" and royalty payments, he definitely brings up an interesting topic that may be a hot topic of debate as the kids grow older: Should each child be getting compensated separately for their roles in the show?

Now, there are a few things of note here. First, Gomez points out that we don't actually know whether or not the kids are getting "paid" in their own right. Those contracts are private, so, with any luck, the media won't get their hands on them just yet. And although states that parents usually have the right to make decisions about their children (on TV) and their money, that's not completely true. Many of those type of child entertainment contracts mandate that the money be placed in a trust that is overseen by someone other than the parents (or guardian that has a personal interest in that money). If that's the case here, whatever money the kids are making can't be touched by Jon and Kate and would be released to the child when they turned 18.

However, since, as Gomez points out, the children are not really "working," child labor laws (and the contractual arrangements that go with them) may not apply. On top of that, since the show started out so small (as a one-time special about The Gosselins), it's possible the contracts were in place long before anyone could have anticipated its enormous success; thus, some of these situations may not have been considered (although, any attorney worth their weight in gold would anticipate it). I think Jon & Kate would have been grateful (at the time) if the show made them enough money to put away a bit of a nest egg to pay the enormous cost of sending 8 kids to college. Now, their living expenses have skyrocketed with the purchase of that huge house and their new found fame, that they need the show to sustain that level of living.

It's certainly an interesting situation from every perspective; I'm trying very hard to keep it a legal perspective here.