A lawyer was employed as a salaried employee in a law firm owned by her husband and the National Insurance Institute refused to pay maternity pay contending that she worked as an independent contractor, inter alia, because her salary as an employee significantly exceeded her husband's profits, no employment contract was signed and no replacement was appointed for her.
The Court held that employer-employee relations existed between the spouses, entitling her to maternity pay. Generally, the examination of employer-employee relations between family members is done with a certain flexibility regarding formal markers such as supervision and written contracts, but requires the existence of the "core essence," which is the payment of a salary in exchange for actual work performed, while applying the integration test: the positive prong, meaning the employee is an integral part of the business's core activity, subject to supervision and working using the employer's equipment and framework, alongside the negative prong, meaning the employee has no independent business of their own and does not bear economic risk or business expenses. Here, the plaintiff integrated into the firm's core activities, did not bear economic risk, and the wage gap is explained by the fact that she worked and received ongoing hourly pay while the husband's profits were derived from the success of cases that were closed late, partly due to the war situation, and therefore not hiring a short-term replacement and the lack of a written contract are reasonable in the context of a family business. Therefore, the lawyer is a salaried employee entitled to maternity pay.