Okay, gin, it appears that you have a new date for a hearing about your overpayment, right? Which means they haven't actually set up your overpayment yet. They haven't actually established and set in stone your $10,000 overpayment.
And yes, all you are entitled to in unemployment is the $400 a month, because in their eyes, you are still being paid by your employer those wages of $1500 a month, that pension from Boeing is considered as wages, just as much as if you were still going in there and working for them part-time every week. That's the way the unemployment law sees it, always has, whether or not they should or shouldn't.
What you received from unemployment was a monetary determination that said, all things being aboveboard, and you meeting the weekly eligibility requirements, you are qualified for an unemployment claim that sets up for $11,700 (or some gross amount close to that) or a WBA (weekly basic allowance) of $450 for some number of weeks, I'm guessing 26.(?)
It will do no good to argue in the overpayment hearing that you should have been eligible because you got that monetary determination. Because whether or not you got that $450 a week was always going to be contingent on whether or not you met the criteria, which included reporting all pensions, wages, changes in your health, offers of work, etc.
But the more important issue is the person who misled you, the one that you called, (by the way, try to determine exactly when you called, try to remember exactly what you were told) Because that makes the whole difference here with the overpayment unit.
Unlike most of these bozos who just figure that what the system doesn't know won't hurt them and they really need the money, and they are going to take a chance about getting caught, you actually made a good faith effort to report to EDD that you had begun getting a pension. You actually called and tried to report this to someone, and were misinformed about how to handle it.
So you can argue that you really did not have an intentional fraud overpayment, okay? You did not intentionally commit fraud, did not deliberately conceal from the system the fact that you were receiving this retirement pension. You have an overpayment because you had been told by a staff person from the unemployment system that your retirement pension did not affect your benefits and you acted in good faith based on this information. (Like I said, I suspect this person misunderstood the question and thought you were talking about a Social Security retirement pension and just shot you an answer from the hip.)
Then, of course, you reported it again when you began your second series claim, and at that point the overpayment was discovered. It was not discovered later by the system cross matching. So you actually were proactive about it, you weren't ever deliberately cheating the system. This is an important consideration.
Okay, now. Calm down. You are jumping way ahead here, and trying to visualize a future in which you are hounded into debtor's prison by the EDD for this $10,000 overpayment. Ain't gonna happen. I'll stake my 30+years of experience on it.
Okay, first they set up the overpayment. They put it on your unemployment record. You keep filing for benefits. You continue to make work searches and look for other work, etc, so that you can draw your unemployment benefits as long as you are eligible for any of them. This money will not be received by you each week, it will go toward this overpayment. If you did this for six months or so, until you had absolutely no more benefits to draw out, this would bring down that overpayment a little bit. They've recouped a little bit on it. They really like this.
Then you run out of unemployment benefits totally. Okay, you'll still have an amount of overpayment on the books. But it is not a fraud overpayment. You have been cooperative about paying for it with your remaining unemployment eligibility. You have made every good faith effort to respond to them and to repay the money. Will they, at this point, send out the police, begin garnishment procedures on your Boeing pension, try to prosecute you? I strongly doubt it. Taking bankruptcy would be sort of silly, since they are not at this time doing any collection process on you, and very likely will never.
They will probably just let it stay on the books. If they call you about it, you can ask for a waiver at that point, explain your financial situation, that you are retired and live only on your pension and Social Security retirement. If worst came to worst, you could offer a tiny amount of money to them each month, which will be a lot less than they would ever take in garnishment.
They probably are not going to vigorously pursue you anyway, since you are not a heavy fraud offender who has refused to cooperate, has told them to talk to your attorney, has really worked yourself into a position where they want to force you to pay the money back.
Of course, if you ever try to get a state tax refund, they could get that to apply to the overpayment. If you ever apply for a state business license, they might refuse it until the overpayment was paid. They might, at some point down the road, as CA goes broker and broker, hire a collection agency to try to recoup these overpayments that remain on the books. But that certainly hasn't happened yet, and it certainly isn't something you should be losing sleep over right now.
The only thing you mentioned that I would discourage, and I would certainly not mention in my appeals hearing is that when you turn 62 and begin getting your retirement pension, you'll stop filing for unemployment. This is what is called voluntarily removing yourself from the labor force. Why would you do that? You're mighty likely not going to find a job and make the earnings that would prohibit you from drawing Social Security retirement anyhow, and if you did, then at that point, you could stop drawing unemloyment if you didn't want to accept the job.
It would be dumb of you, even if you're not actually getting anything at all at that point from unemployment to stop receiving the benefits, because they're taking it to cover this overpayment.
For a minimal amount of trouble, a few job searches, and the off chance you might actually find another really good job at this age and stage in life, you're getting money to pay this overpayment back, at least some of it. And that, as I explained, is going to be helpful in your not being garnished and not being hounded for the money.
As I said, if you're sincere, and you make it clear to them that you want to do the right thing, if you don't spend a lot of time whining and complaining about the sorry old government who is treating you so bad, if you are as helpful about getting this taken care of as possible, I do not think it will go badly for you. Good luck on this next hearing, keep me posted.
