Laid off, given no information on Insurance, Severance or Career Transition

[DannyOcean11]

What is the name of your state (only U.S. law)? Maryland

Hello and thanks for any help. I was let go from my company and was told I would get severance which equaled one week for every year of service which comes to 6 years = 6 weeks. I was given no paperwork or any other information. The only information I was told was that I would be given a packet in the mail about Cobra Insurance.

After about a month of waiting and receiving nothing in the mail I called my former companies HR department and was told that the severance was pending and someone screwed up and didn't process it. 2-3 days later I received a packet in the mail with information about my severance. On it, the weeks were wrong, they only had 3 instead of 6 and it also had a summary page explaining my benefits would expire on a certain date and then it described that I would get career transition help (Resume writing/editing etc).

While I greatly appreciate my company giving me a severance, I am extremely upset of the lack of communication on my health insurance benefits that I will be paying for that I never knew I could use. Over the last month I have had an extreme problem with my leg that I could have had treated but I was waiting on either Cobra or a new jobs benefits to help me address. The whole time I could have had it treated but had no idea I even had any benefits. Not only that but it took me actually calling the HR department to get anyone to even process it. Add on the fact that they calculated it wrong (which I had fixed and another packet sent) and also never receiving a thing about the career transition.

Do I have any rights here that were violated? Are there limits on days in which they needed to send my severance and Cobra/continued benefits? Were they in the wrong by never giving me any information on the day I was let go? The severance package that they sent me has tons of paragraphs that I have to read/sign and send back and I don't want to send it back until I'm aware of my rights.

Thanks very much for reading and helping.

 

[commentator]

Have you filed for your unemployment benefits yet? Even if you are receiving a severance, you can file for benefits the first week you are not working, and should do so. You do not need a letter or any sort of paperwork from your employer, as the unemployment office will obtain all this when the claim is filed if you do not have it. They will communicate with your employer about the exact amount of severance you will be receiving, and this may help to speed their process along. If you haven't filed yet, I suggest you do it at once, as you cannot be back paid for weeks since you have been laid off if you haven't filed a claim for unemployment benefits yet.

The company is required to have COBRA information to you within a certain time frame, not certain of what that is, I'm sure the HR people here will know much more about this. But no, no lawsuits yet. The fact that you didn't know that you still had health care benefits certainly wasn't the fault of the company. Did you think they stopped the day you walked away from the job site?

 

[swalsh411]

They have 30 days to notify you starting with the date of coverage loss. Since it sounds like your coverage didn't end until sometime after your termination, they are within the deadline. You can elect insurance retroactively back to the date you lost it so there is no loss of coverage.

Unless you have a contract which says you get X severance then none is required. The fact that you believe you were told 6 weeks and only received 3 is not relevant since they didn't have to pay you any to begin with.

 

[cbg]

The company and administrator between them have a combined 44 days for COBRA information. The employer has 30 days to notify the administrator, who then has 14 days to notify the employee.

http://www.ebri.org/pdf/publications/facts/091605fact.pdf

 

[Beth3]

It's a shame your employer has mangled your exit so badly but they have (finally) corrected their error regarding your severance. As stated above, your employer has 44 days from the date your insurance ceased to provide you with the COBRA notification.

You CAN have your leg treated. As soon as you make your first COBRA payment, your insurance will be retroactively reinstated to the date it was cancelled.

Assuming the severance agreement has the standard language waiving rights to file discrimination complaints, sue the company, etc, there's no reason you shouldn't sign it and send it back. There is no legal action for you to take.