If we’re being honest, we know it’s hard to think about legal issues when you’ve just been fired. In fact, handling the legal side of things might be the furthest thing from your mind – instead, you want to focus on how you can continue to pay your rent, pay for your food, and provide for your family.
That’s why it’s important to learn three important legal strategies you can employ when you’ve been fired – these quick strategies can make a world of difference for you and your financial situation, and they won’t take a lot of time out of your unemployment days. So let’s get started and figure out how to legally handle getting fired.
Strategy #1: Get everything in writing.
You want to make sure that the reason you’ve been fired is in writing – a termination letter can help you collect unemployment, for one thing, but this letter can also help as evidence in case there is a potential wrongful termination lawsuit in the air. Too many people believe they’ve been wrongfully terminated before having read their initial employment offers, so make sure that you have this document handy as well and give it a good once-over. Having these documents set aside in a career folder is a great way to ensure you have some paperwork to show a lawyer should the need arise.
Strategy #2: Understand both your rights and your employment terms.
If your firing is a breach of contract with your employer, then you might be able to sue them in order to get some sort of gains in court – or at least through a settlement. But in order to know whether or not you have a case, you need to have two pieces of knowledge. First, you need to know your basic employment rights in terms of federal and state laws. Second, you need to know the employment terms that placed a structure for your job – if you’ve been fired for the wrong reason, you might be able to file a lawsuit.
Strategy #3: Request all the benefits you can.
If your contract stipulates that you can receive a compensation package upon being fired, you’ll want to be aware of it – and you’ll want to make your company aware of it if they haven’t already paid you this package. Request all the benefits you deserve according to the terms of your employment, and make sure that you make copies of all these written requests so that you can prove that you made them should the need arise in the future. Making sure that everything is in writing is a great way to build evidence toward a lawsuit if you ever need to file one.
Ultimately, you might not win as much as you think you should win, which is why it’s important to handle this difficult time in your life smartly. The smarter you work – and the more you are able to get in writing – the better you should do, helping you to build a foundation for a better life and better employment somewhere else.