Household NDAs Can Stretch to 15 Pages, Dara Yates Says

By Olivia Hart

Joseph Maya told The New York Times that the number of NDA inquiries he receives has “easily increased a hundredfold” over five years. That statistic measures inquiries at one law firm, not industry-wide adoption. The New York Times report did not count households using NDAs, workers signing them or enforcement disputes.

What is driving household NDAs?

The New York Times reports that wealthy employers increasingly require butlers, tutors, private chefs and other household staff to sign nondisclosure agreements. Joseph Maya, managing partner and co-founder of Maya Murphy, has worked in law for three decades and attributes the increase to buyers maintaining lavish homes with more art, jewelry and cars.

Maya said those buyers fear that information about their possessions and lives will become known. He contrasted that concern with 30 years ago, when he said an observation could not appear on TikTok, Instagram or X within seconds.

The Times presented Maya’s view as an expert explanation, not a survey of wealthy employers. It did not show how many workers sign, negotiate or challenge the agreements. For affected workers, the practical change is that confidentiality has entered jobs once associated mainly with business deals.

How far can a household NDA reach?

A landscape designer told The Times that a proposed contract with a household-name celebrity would cover her, her employees, her subcontractors and her crew. It would also reach plant suppliers, extending the proposed secrecy duty beyond workers directly serving the household.

She also described a clause prohibiting anyone from entering the site with Google glasses. She withheld her name to protect her business relationships.

The report did not disclose the contract’s duration, compensation terms, legal basis or exceptions. Without those details, the example establishes the NDA’s stated scope, not whether a court would enforce every restriction. The proposal therefore reaches well beyond direct employees, but the Times account does not show its legal force.

What changed from gossip to security?

Dara Yates, founder of California-based Seaside Staffing, told The Times that household NDAs grew from a single paragraph to as much as 15 pages. Seaside Staffing places nannies with wealthy families, and Yates has worked in the industry for 43 years.

The Times described the change as an expansion from gossip control to broader restrictions on disclosure. Yates supplied a direct comparison, but the report gave no prevalence data or examples of household NDAs challenged in court.

Seaside Staffing integrations engineer Luke Yates told the Times that wealthy employers increasingly worry about employee access to financial records, security information and medical data. He said the concern extends beyond gossip to a house manager’s knowledge of the employer’s whereabouts and assets.

That assessment comes from one staffing firm and does not establish that every wealthy household seeks location or asset data. The report identified no case of staff misuse and did not describe how employers monitor access.

Elizabeth Pipkin, an attorney at Silicon Valley firm McManis Faulkner, told the Times that NDAs can help wealthy clients defend against extortion and reputational damage. She said: “People have these large household staffs in multiple locations and, with that, comes all the things you’d expect any corporate entity to have, including confidentiality agreements.”

Pipkin did not identify the clients, incidents or agreements behind her legal assessment. The Times report offered no data on enforcement disputes or court outcomes, leaving the corporate analogy untested in the account. For workers, the practical change is concrete: confidentiality agreements can cover staff across several homes and, according to Yates, stretch to 15 pages.