Ex-employer wants extra payment back

IMO (IANAL) the answer is yes they can, providing it was reasonable. If this is significantly more than you had normally (i.e. you would have noticed it) and you've spent it, they can still ask for it back, though probably over a reasonable period of time.

I think the situation is fairly clear. You can't charge them a fee but you can pay it back in installments (if you can't pay it back straight away without inconvenience or distress to yourself).

Tell them why you can't pay it back straight away (if you can't) and offer to pay back in installments over, say, 5 years. Send a cheque for the first installment and offer to set up a standing order if they provide you the relevant bank details.

Thom

Hmmm. I ended employment with them last October and recieved a final payment in November.

This payment was made in January and was probably slighttly more than my normal monthly salary.

What would constitute a reasonable period of time?

Even though the payment was made only a month ago?

Not sure how keen they'd be on getting it back over 5 years....

IANAL.

It is not a criminal act because you do not intend to "permanently deprive" the owner of the money. But you owe the money and have no lawful right to withold or delay payment.

Even if you cannot pay it all back immediately due to having spent it, your position is similar to getting a legitimate bill that you cannot afford to pay. If you do not reach an agreement (and it is *you* who are defaulting), your ex-employer could still sue you and you could end up paying the money back together with legal fees and interest.

After obtaining such judgement (which you are in no position to contest), the sum stated is high enough that your ex-employer could issue bankruptcy proceedings against you if you cannot or will not pay up immediately following the judgement.

So the best advice is that if you can pay, then pay now, because otherwise it could end up costing you more. If you are unable to pay because you have spent the money, then it is in your interests to make an offer that will be accepted by your ex-employer, which will probably involve paying it back *with interest* in the shortest time that your ex-employer believes that you can manage.

You can offer but they don't have to agree.

They can take you to court and if need be ask the court to order you to prove you have spent it. The judge is not going to be very impressed with your bloody minded attitude. He might well order you to pay your ex employer's costs. The sensible thing would be to pay up and shut up.

Peter Crosland

It is clear that the OP is far from being on a minimum wage, and is almost certainly in a position to pay back the money in a far shorter time frame.

ISTM that if an offer to pay back over 5 years was made (which works out at only £10 per week), the ex-employer would (correctly) decide that the OP was taking the piss and would begin legal proceedings.

AFAIAA (but IANAL) the ex-employer is in the position of being owed money and is not *obliged* to accept anything less than an immediate return of the money, though in the circumstances would probably be fairly flexible *so long as they believe the OP is being genuine*.

The OP is entitled to keep any interest that the money has earned, whilst the ex-employer is entitled to charge interest from the time that they made the OP aware of the mistake.

Not quite. Yes, the employer could sue and would win, but there is no basis for charging interest. There is no loan agreement, they gave/lent you the money without your permission, so they can't expect interest.

Also, legal fees can be avoided (apart from your own, of course) by making a pre-trial offer to settle by *reasonable* instalments. If they still sue because they think the proposed instalments are unreasonable, the court may nonetheless find them to be reasonable. That means they essentially had no basis to sue (because they didn't win anything in court that you had not already offered) and therefore their legal fees cannot be added to the claim, nor can court fees.

I would suggest to offer to repay over 5 years. If they think that unreasonable, they will say so. You can then offer to pay it back over, say, one year. It's unlikely a court would deem that unreasonable, so they would risk losing any suit which sought to force you to pay it back quicker.

Legally, what options do they have if I dont repay it? I'm assuming they'd need to take me to small claims court or something? Realistically, what am I likely to get away with?

To be honest, I'm probably going to do this for the craic of winding them up and making it awkward for them rather than for any financial gain. (Although it would be nice to keep the money and pay it back over

5 years !!!)

I work for a large employer in the Fnance Department. My organisation employs 1000s of people, and I get to know about all the overpayments of salary that happen during the month. Overpayments generally happen because somebody has forgotton to send the paperwork to HR or payroll, or the paperwork gets stuck somewhere on the way and then arrives too late to stop the monthly salary going in.

Our stance on salary overpayments is that once we become aware of it, we write to the person. If they are a current employee, we explain the error and then tell them we will take out the overpayment from the their next payslip, unless they can prove there is going to be in hardship as a result. If the person has left, we write a letter and ask for a full reimbursement. If they can't afford to make a full reimbursement, we go for a planned repayment. If they refuse to repay, we go for legal recovery. We have always been successful in recovering the money owed, which in one case, resulted in us taking out a charging order against the ex-employees house, which they were in the process of selling. We got our money from the proceeds of the sale.

Probably about 3 months for theft or deception.

If you don't mind me asking, what sort of period of repayments do you normally accept?

Anything that's reasonable. If somebody asks for a repayment plan for more than 3 months, we always ask them to complete a statement of means and get them to send in bank and credit card statements. In more cases than not, that usually means the person can suddenly afford to repay and they pay off fairly swiftly.

Well, I'm no lawyer, but if I were you I'd make them a reasonable offer involving both of those things. As long as you're not being obviously over-greedy, they would have to be particularly bloody minded to take you to court. If it were me, I'd charge them a 10% admin fee and offer to pay the rest back over 1 year, and start by sending them a cheque for the first instalment.

Put yourself in their position: faced with that offer, would you cut your losses, or would you go to all the trouble and expense of legal action? Bear in mind that legal action is not only expensive for them, it's also bad PR.

If on the other hand you charge them a £1000 admin fee and offer to pay back over 5 years, they would quite rightly think that you are taking the piss and call their lawyers in.

You are incorrect IIUC. The courts have for some time been awarding interest on late payments.

Correct. That is why I urged the OP to offer such a settlement. Note that a court will not regard *any* offer as being reasonable if they find that the person had the means to pay it all at the time but

*chose* not to do so. I suggest that as soon as the judge asks to look at the OP's bank statements for the time he was first asked to pay the money back, the judge will be able to form an opinion as to whether that was or was not the case.

If you start out by making a totally unreasonable offer, they may decide to go straight to legal action - at which point your unreasonable offer will stand against you.

Well, I'm no lawyer, but if I were you I'd make them a reasonable offer involving both of those things. As long as you're not being obviously over-greedy, they would have to be particularly bloody minded to take you to court. If it were me, I'd charge them a 10% admin fee and offer to pay the rest back over 1 year, and start by sending them a cheque for the first instalment.

You are so wrong! There is no leagl basis whatsoever for such a charge and thew courts would certainly not allow it.

Put yourself in their position: faced with that offer, would you cut your losses, or would you go to all the trouble and expense of legal action? Bear in mind that legal action is not only expensive for them, it's also bad PR.

Not at all. Mistakes happen all the time. Money claim online is cheap and easy. The costs of this would be recoverable from the OP. The bad publicity is likely to do much more harm to the OP. His new employer might well decide he wants such a troublemaker out.

Peter Crosland

A "late payment" might arise if you had ordered some goods or services and are dragging your heels over paying the bill. There will be terms and conditions in the purchase contract which may include the provision to charge interest on monies overdue. *That* is what courts would enforce. But here, I humbly sumbit, we have a completely different situation.

I don't think merely *having* the money (not the original money, of course, which will be alleged to have been spent, but other funds in similar quantity) should necessarily be a good enough reason to require it to be paid out immediately and in one go. It may be tied up in accounts with early withdrawal penalties, or the money may be genuinely required to meet anticipated expenditure, or just to sit there in case an emergency arises (and I don't think an employer asking for their golden handshake back counts as an "emergency"). If a person has genuinely spent the money believing to have been entitled to it, and spent it on something he could not really have afforded otherwise, then it shouldn't (within reason) matter how much he's got stashed in savings. The repayment schedule should depend more on expected future cash flows.

They can't "go straight to legal action". If they want to take you to court they have to warn you first, giving you a chance to crumble humbly into submission and say you were only joking and could you please pay it back over three months. :-)

They can expect interest on the money from the date they made him aware that he owed it to them.

The only circumstances a court would find 1 year reasonable, given how recently the money was paid, would be if he could somehow show that he believed it to be what he was due, and that he had spent it before being notified.

Otherwise, he will be expected to pay it back immediately.

Basically, my ex-employer seems to have accidentally deposited 2500 in my account. However, now they've realised and want it back.

This particular ex-employer did me no favours whatsoever, and treated me very badly indeed.

OK. So I suppose they can make me pay it back but :-

1. Can I charge them an admin fee for the trouble its caused me?
2. Can I offer to pay it back in monthly installments?

Legally, what options do they have if I dont repay it? I'm assuming they'd need to take me to small claims court or something? Realistically, what am I likely to get away with?

To be honest, I'm probably going to do this for the craic of winding them up and making it awkward for them rather than for any financial gain. (Although it would be nice to keep the money and pay it back over

5 years !!!)

=========================== This happened to me many years ago, similar situation, bastard employers, I decided I'd just ignore their letters until I got something legal just to cause them some hassle, and then I'd send them a cheque. Fortunately they never got round to sending me the legal letter, and they seemed to give up, so I ended up keeping the money :-)

Personally I wouldnt bother with the installments idea etc, too much hassle for very little gain. I suppose you could always send them a cheque for say

2400, 'in full and final settlement', with 100 deducted for "administrative expenses" and see what happens.