As school is out for the summer and teens are hitting the workforce, employers may be asked to turn over the minor’s wages to his or her parent. Is this legal? Yes, according to the Minnesota Payment of Wages Act:

Any parent or guardian claiming the wages of a minor in service shall so notify the employer and, if failing to do so, payment to the minor of wages so earned shall be valid.”

Minn. Stat. 181.01. A minor has control of his or her earned wages unless such a request is made. However, I suspect this is much more common with child actors than your fast food worker teen. This is such a quirky law that I recently was made aware of, I couldn’t not share it – so there you go! If you want to learn more about paying minors, I blogged about it here. If you want to learn more about the hours minors can work, I blogged about it recently as well here.