Trailing Spouse unemployment question FL - CO

[eoleanx]

Hi,

I'm new to this forum and would appreciate some help with the below issues:

I Did some searching but could find a complete answer to my scenario.

My wife and I currently live in Florida and both work. I found a job in Colorado and we're going to move there. While I'm relocating to a new job, my wife has to quit her job and doesn't have a new one lined up in CO. We're planing on using the unemployment benefits while she is looking for a new job out there.

I know that Florida / Colorado have a trailing spouse provision, however I'm not sure how much unemployment we can expect to receive if any at all. My wife is a teacher and makes about 37k a year.

Any insights as to how long it would take once we request unemployment for her to actually receive money would be appreciated. I will be earning more in CO than I am now so I'm not sure if that would factor into this as well. I'm also curious as to how long the unemployment lasts.

Thanks in advance for your help!

 

[Chyvan]

I'm not sure how much unemployment we can expect to receive if any at all.

You won't get anything unless you're moving because of a military transfer.

http://workforcesecurity.doleta.gov/unemploy/pdf/uilawcompar/2015/nonmonetary.pdf see page 5-6.

 

[commentator]

A "not going to happen" is the case here, unfortunately. Unless you happen to be a military spouse, transferring under orders, it is not a remote possibility. Florida has a very tight, employer friendly, less than generous unemployment system. If you are a military spouse being transferred under orders, it will still be a Florida unemployment claim, though it will be filed in Colorado, because Florida is the state where your wife's employment has been for the past 18 months. This means that if qualified, she would be eligible for a maximum of $275 a week for 26 weeks, if she complied with all sorts of regulations and job searching requirements, including a drug test and frequent reporting to local employment services.

The fact that she is a teacher means that she will, if she ever wants to work again as a teacher in any state, resign from her position in Florida with adequate notice and maintain a professional exit relationship with the school system where she is now working. Up and quitting during the term to follow a husband to Colorado isn't going to be very well received, I would suspect. There will also be another state's licensure she must obtain, which may require some extra school work, to teach in this different state, if she's going to work within their public school system. You need to investigate this. And unemployment for her isn't going to be an option, unless, as I mentioned, which it doesn't sound like, you are in the military and are being transferred through this employment without your choice.

You guys may want to think about a temporary separation, with you going ahead to Colorado and getting set up in the new job, while she finishes out the school year there in Florida. And school systems, which are a special category for unemployment anyway, and have to pay unemployment benefits penny for penny only if someone is actually approved to draw benefits, will fight doggedly not to have to pay them, regardless. They'd sometimes go so far as not to hire someone if they thought that they might later have to follow a military spouse and might receive unemployment benefits for that reason! (I've actually heard this brought up as a reason not to hire a person in a teaching position.)

 

[eoleanx]

great answer, thank you. Honestly she hates her job and the students are horrible to her, she has even been assaulted at school (which makes me wonder if she could quit due to harassment). It looks like we will either have to wait till her school year is over, or she'll have to find a job as soon as we're over there.

 

[commentator]

I really hope that the matter of the assault was dealt with by the administration in some way. In any case, your wife apparently went to school and obtained a professional degree to be qualified to teach school. Probably got student debt to do it, or at least paid handsomely for that degree.

It would be a shame to so completely blow an early teaching assignment (even though it is not a good experience) to the point that it would be difficult for her to obtain another job in the field. There are good and bad school systems and teaching jobs. This is just one place and one experience.

However, if she were to try to make some kind of big deal about something that has already happened, like that she had been assaulted at some point earlier during this teaching year, and quit the job now, saying she quit due to harassment, which just happens to tie in with your getting a job in Colorado, the school system would be very upset with her. This would probably greatly affect her chances of ever finding a teaching position even in another state, because frankly, her references from this job would totally be poor.

And to quit under these circumstances would not likely qualify her for unemployment benefits, either. If she was going to quit due to a situation where she was being harassed, or where she was actually assaulted by a student, she'd better have complained about it immediately and quit her job at that time if that was the precipitating incident. And as I said, that might, best case for you, very unlikely scenario, qualify her for a meager $275 a month, which would take literally months to get started, and then would end with about $7000 at the most. And you've got that situation of very poor references from the school system where you have your work experience that will trail you all the way to Colorado.

 

[eoleanx]

You're right that it wouldn't be worth the small benefit. She went to school for Biology & Chemistry. Teaching was something she fell back on since we didn't have any opportunities locally for a job in her field and its not something she wants to keep doing. Luckily she didn't have to spend money (other than a few hundred here and there) to get the certificate. It is something nice to fall back on if she can't find anything else.

Thank you for all the great advice. It will make moving more difficult without any support from her financially but not impossible.