Fired, Still Getting Paid

[czimborbryan]

I was fired a month ago from an employer in CT and had already received my last paycheck including a reimbursement for personal time.

A direct deposit for my regular full pay check just showed up. I'm certain this was not for time worked.

Do I have any right to this money? I would love to keep it because they had completely screwed me over, but I also do not want to get into trouble. What should I do?

 

[cbg]

No, you do not have any right to money that you didn't earn. The sooner you notify them of the problem, the less money you will have to pay them back. And make no mistake, it WILL be caught and you WILL have to pay it back. There is no legal justification whatsoever for you to keep the money.

 

[czimborbryan]

Yeah, that's what I thought, but I don't understand what you're saying about having to pay them back more money than what they sent. Is this for interest?

 

[cbg]

No, I mean that if the problem continues and they continue to pay you, which has been known to happen with some payroll glitches. If you contact them now, you only have to pay back one period's pay. If they send another, then you have to pay back two period's pay. You don't ever have to pay back more than they sent you, but if your payroll didn't get stopped, then you may get more and you'll have to pay that back too.

Also, we are getting very close to the end of the year, and tax wise it gets much more complicated if you go over into 2012 than if you get things squared away while it's still 2011.

 

[army judge]

OP, I had this happen to a client I had a few years ago.

He received about $20,000 before
He disclosed that he had been receiving these payouts after he had resigned from his past employer.
He also had been spending the money.
I suggested he contact the payroll manager.
He did and told them what had been happening.

It took them about a week to get back to him.
They told him to keep the money.
With any luck, who knows, this just might happen to you.
He had worked for a large Fortune 500 company.
I got curious about the matter, and began asking about it.
I've come to learn that it isn't as rare as one would believe.
I also learned that larger companies often just tell those lucky folks, just forget about it for being honest.
I'm not suggesting that will happen to you, but honesty does pay.
Good luck, let us know what happens.

 

[cbg]

Caveat: IF the company does tell you to keep the money, GET IT IN WRITING signed by someone who has the authority to make that decision. That way it can't come back to bite you in the behind sometime later, when the person who tells you that has moved onto another company, or has forgotten what he told you.

I agree with AJ that it's possible they'll tell you to keep it. But if they do, it's not because you have a legal right to it; you don't. There are no legal concepts under which their mistake makes it your money. If they tell you to keep it, it's almost certainly because they don't want to deal with the paperwork and it's not enough money for them to bother with at the end of the year when they're overwhelmed with all the end of the year reporting.

But that does not mean that someone else, sometime next year or two years from now or anytime up to the statute of limitations in your state (and I don't know what it is in CT but WA is the only state I know of where it is less than two years) could override them and come back to you for it. So IF they tell you that, make sure you have back up.

 

[czimborbryan]

I'll give them a call tomorrow and see what happens.