Legal Question in Employment Law in Virginia
Collecting Bonus pay when leaving a company
I am an IT consultant and left my old company at the end of 2005. It was bought out by a bigger company and I did not like the new employee benefits or management style. When the new company bought out my original company, they instituted a ''bonus'' as an insentive to keep the empoyees from leaving because of the buy out. When I left there was some talk about me having to pay back my bonus since I did not stay the full year after the buyout. It is 8 months later and now the compay is coming back to collect. 1) Do I have to pay back the bonus if they have made no effort to collect until now and 2) How long can they wait to collect the money? They are only now making an effort because I made contact with the HR department trying to get a rollover IRA form to rollover my 401K account into an IRA. I suspect that had I not made contact they would not be trying to collect.
Thank you for your time.
Joseph--name removed--
Vienna, Va
1 Answer from Attorneys
Re: Collecting Bonus pay when leaving a company
My understanding is that in situations such as you've described, the answer depends upon when was the bonus actually earned and due? If it was during the term when you were still employed, it must be payed to you, the employee; otherwise, No Dice(to use a figure of speech from Mid 20th Century America).
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