Coogan Law & Protecting Earnings

The law is named after Jackie Coogan, one of the first great child stars — the little boy who co-starred with Charlie Chaplin in The Kid in 1921 and earned a fortune as a child. When he grew up and went looking for the money he'd made, he discovered his parents had spent nearly all of it; under the law at the time, a child's earnings legally belonged to the parents. His very public legal battle led California to pass the Child Actor's Bill in 1939 — the original Coogan Law — and it has been strengthened over the decades since. The core idea is simple and powerful: a child's earnings belong to the child, and a portion of them must be set aside in a protected trust account that no one can raid. If you take one thing from this whole course, let it be that a child actor's money must be protected by law, because that principle is the reason child actors can work at all without being exploited.

How the Coogan account works

The mechanics, in plain terms (details vary by state and country — always confirm locally):

• A dedicated trust account. The family must set up a special blocked trust — commonly called a "Coogan account" — at a bank or approved institution, in the child's name, before the child works.
• A percentage is set aside. A portion of the child's gross earnings (commonly 15% in the states that require it) must be deposited directly into that trust account by the employer.
• The money is locked until adulthood. Funds in the account are protected — parents cannot withdraw or spend them. The child gains access when they reach the age of majority.
• The production has a role. The employer is typically responsible for withholding the required percentage and depositing it into the Coogan account, and for collecting proof that the account exists before employing the child.
• It varies by jurisdiction. California, New York, and some other states have specific Coogan-style requirements; others don't, or have different rules. Where you shoot determines what applies.

What this means for you as a filmmaker

Here's where it gets practical, because Coogan Law isn't just background — it creates real obligations for your production. In the jurisdictions that require it, before a child can legally work on your set, the family needs to have opened a Coogan trust account and given you proof of it, and your production is responsible for withholding the mandated percentage of the child's pay and depositing it into that account rather than handing it all to the parents. That's a payroll and paperwork responsibility that sits on the production side, and on any professional shoot it's handled by the payroll company or production accountant who deals with child performers all the time. On a small indie film where you're doing everything yourself, it's on you to find out what your state or country requires and to comply — which usually means asking the family to set up the account and building the withholding into how you pay them. The stakes for getting it wrong are serious: it's the child's legally protected money, and mishandling it isn't a paperwork slip, it's a potential legal liability. But none of this should scare you off. It's a known, standardized process; payroll services exist specifically to handle it; and the family of a working child actor is usually already familiar with it. Your job is simply to know that it exists, to confirm what applies where you're shooting, and to make sure the child's protected share actually reaches their protected account. Do that, and you've honored the whole point of the law that Jackie Coogan's hard lesson created: the child does the work, so the child keeps a protected piece of the reward. It's one of the genuinely good rules in this industry, and complying with it is part of being a filmmaker who can be trusted with a child on set. In the next chapters we'll cover the other legal pieces — the labor laws that limit the child's hours, and the work permits that make their employment legal in the first place.