A coastal property rarely runs itself. Someone watches the house in the owner’s absence; someone keeps the grounds; a development relies on crews to build it. Each of these is, to the owner, a practical arrangement. To Mexican law, each may be something more consequential.
Hiring someone to look after a house is not a favour exchanged. It is an employment relationship, with everything that follows.
There Is No Casual Employment
Mexican labour law attaches obligations from the start of the relationship, not from the moment it is put in writing. A household worker — a caretaker, a domestic, a gardener — is now subject to mandatory social-security enrolment, and the duty to register them and cover the corresponding contributions falls on the employer, not the worker.
The protections do not wait for a contract. They attach to the work.
What the Owner Owes
Beyond enrolment, an employer owes the full set of entitlements Mexican law guarantees, and when a relationship ends, the law’s severance rules apply whether or not anything was ever recorded. Leaving an arrangement informal does not reduce the obligation. It removes the owner’s evidence of ever having met it.
Development and Its Crews
For a development, the exposure is larger. Mexico’s labour reform prohibits the subcontracting of personnel and permits specialized services only through providers entered in the federal registry. Engaging an unregistered provider can cost the deductibility of the expense and draw joint-and-several liability for that provider’s labour and social-security debts.
Buying What Comes With Staff
Acquiring a property or business already in operation can carry its workforce with it. Under employer substitution, an incoming owner may become jointly liable for labour obligations that predate the purchase — an exposure rarely reflected in the price, and easily missed in diligence trained only on title.
Recognized Early, Carried Lightly
The line between a helpful arrangement and an employment relationship is drawn by law, not by intention, and in Mexico it is drawn early. The owner who recognizes the employer’s position from the outset carries it lightly. The one who discovers it late carries it at far greater cost.
The cost of an employee is rarely the wage. It is everything the law attaches to it.