health insurance qualifying event - HR will not enroll

[swalsh411]

What is the name of your state (only U.S. law)? MD/CA

There is a situation here at work reagrding an employee with whom I have developed a rapport and said I would look into it for him. He is of somewhat limited mental capacity in terms of dealing with these sorts of things.

He had a qualifying event (wife lost her job) and so he wanted to enroll his family in his employer's insurance. He lives in California and the HR office is in Maryland. On the last possibile day (Jan 10) at 11 PM California time, he faxed the enrollment forms to HR in Maryland. So according to the clocks in Maryland it didn't arrive until the next day (Jan 11) because they are 3 or 4 hours ahead. HR is refusing to enroll him in the insurance saying he was a day too late even though according to his fax confirmation sheet it was still Jan 10 in California at the time he sent it.

Is HR required to enroll him? Which clock counts?

I told him several times not to procrastinate but apparently it took him weeks to decide and HR told him several times he had until Jan 10th to fax in the forms.

 

[Antigone*]

What is the name of your state (only U.S. law)? MD/CA

There is a situation here at work reagrding an employee with whom I have developed a rapport and said I would look into it for him. He is of somewhat limited mental capacity in terms of dealing with these sorts of things.

He had a qualifying event (wife lost her job) and so he wanted to enroll his family in his employer's insurance. He lives in California and the HR office is in Maryland. On the last possibile day (Jan 10) at 11 PM California time, he faxed the enrollment forms to HR in Maryland. So according to the clocks in Maryland it didn't arrive until the next day (Jan 11) because they are 3 or 4 hours ahead. HR is refusing to enroll him in the insurance saying he was a day too late even though according to his fax confirmation sheet it was still Jan 10 in California at the time he sent it.

Is HR required to enroll him? Which clock counts?

I told him several times not to procrastinate but apparently it took him weeks to decide and HR told him several times he had until Jan 10th to fax in the forms.

Your friend should have listened to you. It sucks that he didn't

 

[cbg]

If it were my employee, we'd probably enroll him. However, they are not required to.

 

[Beth3]

I told him several times not to procrastinate but apparently it took him weeks to decide and HR told him several times he had until Jan 10th to fax in the forms. There are consequences for procrastination and one of them is missing a deadline. Your friend faxed the paperwork well after the close of business on Jan 10th. Between that and the time change between the west and east coast, he missed the boat.

Maybe next time he has an important deadline he'll make a point of doing what he needs to do on time. There's no hard and fast rule on this but I've always used "date received" as the deadline for getting forms into HR, not the date the document was mailed/faxed/carrier pidgeoned/slow boated from China/whatever.

 

[swalsh411]

I didn't think it would be good news.

He does have an email from HR that says he has until midnight on Jan 10 to fax the forms. Nobody realized his midnight is not the same think as midnight in Maryland.