What is the list of names and ages attached to my severance agreement?
What is the list of names and ages attached to my severance agreement?
If you were laid off as part of a group and you are 40 or older, your severance agreement probably arrived with an extra document attached, often an unlabeled spreadsheet listing job titles and ages. Most people flip past it. It is one of the more important pieces of paper in the entire package, and almost nobody knows what it is.
It exists because of a federal law, and understanding what it is tells you a great deal about the decision that was made about your job.
Why the document exists
When a company asks you to sign a severance agreement, it is almost always asking you to waive your right to bring certain claims, including age discrimination claims, in exchange for the money. For workers 40 and older, a federal law called the Older Workers Benefit Protection Act sets specific conditions a company has to meet for that waiver to be valid. The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, the federal agency that enforces it, publishes plain-language guidance on how these waivers work, and everything described here comes from that public guidance.
The point of the law is straightforward. Congress decided that older workers should not be able to sign away age discrimination rights without real time to consider the decision and real information about what is happening. So the law requires the company to give you both.
What the law requires
For the waiver of age claims to be valid, several conditions generally have to be met. Among them:
You must get time to consider the agreement. In an individual termination, that is typically 21 days. In a group termination or an exit incentive program, which is what a larger layoff usually is, that period is typically 45 days.
You must get 7 days after signing to revoke your decision, and the agreement cannot take effect until that revocation period has passed.
The agreement must advise you in writing to consult an attorney.
It must be written in plain language you can actually understand.
And in a group termination, the company must give you specific information about the group of people who were considered. This is the document you are asking about.
What the attached list actually is
In a group layoff, the law requires the employer to disclose what is often called the decisional unit, meaning the group of employees who were considered for the layoff. Along with it, the company must provide the eligibility factors, the time limits, and a list of the job titles and ages of the people who were selected for the layoff and the people in that same group who were not selected.
That is the spreadsheet stapled to the back of your agreement. It is not random paperwork. It is a federally required disclosure showing you the shape of the decision that included your job.
Read plainly, it tells you which group the company drew from, and how the selections and non-selections broke down by age and role. It is the one document in the entire package that shows you the decision from above rather than just your own piece of it.
What to do with it, and where my lane ends
Here is where I want to be clear about what I do and what I do not do.
I read a severance package for what it does to your balance sheet, your tax year, and your runway. That is my job, and it is the subject of the rest of this series. Whether the information in that disclosure supports any kind of legal claim is a different question, and it is a question for an employment attorney, not for me and not for an article.
So the practical guidance is this. Do not throw the document away, and do not ignore it. It is part of your official record of the layoff. If anything about the disclosure raises a question in your mind, that is a conversation to have with an employment attorney, who can look at your specific situation and tell you whether there is anything there. Many people never have that conversation simply because they did not understand that the document meant anything. Now you know that it does.
Keep the full agreement and every attachment together in one place. You may want them later, whether for the financial planning side, which is where I come in, or for a legal review, which is where an employment attorney comes in.
If you want help understanding what your package does to your financial picture, that part I am glad to walk through with you. Start a conversation.
Riverstone Wealth Partners and LPL Financial do not provide legal or tax advice. Please consult with your tax or legal advisor regarding your personal situation.
This material was created to provide accurate and reliable information on the subjects covered but should not be regarded as a complete analysis of these subjects. It is not intended to provide specific legal, tax or other professional advice. The services of an appropriate professional should be sought regarding your individual situation.
