Hey guys, it's Ginny Silver at.
Many are receiving overpayment notices
from the California Edd.
So I have spoken with Asaf Laktash
from Pershing Square Law Firm about some
important things to know about overpayment notices,
overpayment appeals and overpayment and waivers.
This video is sponsored by Pershing Square Law Firm.
Pershing Square Law Firm is California's first and
the only law firm dedicated to Edd law.
They represent clients in appealing any kind
of adverse decision made by the Edd.
Whether it is a denial of benefits overpayments
procedural or computational issues with your claim, they
represent claimants undergoing any of these issues.
In the eight years they have been in
business, they have maintained an A Plus rating
and accreditation from the Better Business Bureau.
They offer a flat rate fee and do not operate
on percentages, so claimants keep almost all of their benefits.
Purchasing Square Law Firm understands that their clients
are undergoing financial hardship and therefore their pricing
is intended to be very accessible to most
people, even those undergoing such financial hardship.
Lastly, they offer a complimentary consultation, and anyone
facing legal issues with the Edd can call
into Pushing Square Law Firm and receive helpful
information and get questions answered directly from an
attorney through a free consultation.
Click on the link in the video description.
In order to contact Pushing Square Law
Firm up until the end of December,
you didn't have to prove self employment.
So people filed their claims thinking it's okay and
they never asked anybody to show their self employment.
So I think people were kind of gaslighted into
a trap where now they're in this claim and
they're collecting money and they're depending on it.
And then the lot changed and nobody knows about it.
Eventually they say, oh, actually, we do want
you to show that you are selfemployed.
And by the way, what we consider selfemployed
might not be what you're actually doing.
So you're going to end up with a debt of $30,000.
We're talking about people who have just gotten
back on their feet after this pandemic.
The people who end up with those overpayments are
not the ones who have strong businesses who receive
probably nice hefty PPP loans or disaster loans.
These are the people who are literally at
the bottom of that financial totem pole.
Those are the people who do the gig
work and are starting off their careers.
And so they're the ones that get hurt
the most by this ineptitude by the ADB.
It's crazy, and it's not going to just go away.
The fees and the interest will compound.
It's a huge problem.
Yes, that's why Ginny, I
really have to reiterate again.
Okay, it's so important that this is the
moment that those people have to act.
They have to use this opportunity.
Don't just say, oh, it's the government. Get about it.
I'll just disappear and deliver hear from you again.
Don't say those things because you're just going to
make your problem so much more difficult to fix.
This is the moment to confront this, fight it and reverse
it and mitigate it to the best of your ability.
You might not be able to get rid of all
of it, but you can get rid of some of
it and just put this problem in its place.
When someone first receives an overpayment notice, what sort
of timeframes do they need to keep in mind?
Because I know that it's time sensitive.
What should be their first series of actions with that?
Okay.
So usually when you're overpaid, it may be
proceeded with a notice of proposed overpayment, meaning
the Edd is letting you know that they're
considering to find an overpayment against you.
And the letter briefly explains why, and
it gives you a chance to respond.
Sometimes it works.
Sometimes it doesn't.
But what I would suggest is, first of all,
try to exhaust this opportunity to get rid of
the overpayment and nip it in the budget.
If you can't, you'll get a notice
of overpayment and a notice of determination.
Two letters.
Both of them are appealable.
Notice of determination explains the reason that you are
overpaid and the notice of overpayment sort of lists
out all the weeks that you have been overpaid
and the total amount, and it will also determine
or show you if you have a penalty.
There are two kinds of penalties.
There's a 30% penalty of the principal amount, and
there's a certain number of weeks that you're going
to be disqualified to receive benefits in the future.
They usually run somewhere from
15 to something much higher.
Sometimes they give less than 15.
But recently I've noticed that they've become more
punitive, and I think they've lost their tolerance
to people not reporting things correctly, and they
just attribute everything to fraud.
So we're seeing those 15
week disqualifications everywhere nowadays.
So the first thing you want to do is
you have 30 days to file an appeal and
you have to appeal both those documents.
That's critical, because if you appeal just one, you'll
get a hearing for the overpayment, but you won't
get a hearing for the issue that causes.
Okay, that's something.
I didn't realize that both documents had
to be appealed separately through separate paperwork.
It's not all connected.
It should be.
And sometimes it does go through as an
appeal for both issues, but not always.
And then why take the risk?
Because if you file one appeal and then you get
a week or months later and notice of hearing just
for one issue, not for the second issue.
You'll file a late appeal for the second
issue, and then you're putting your case at
risk because it's slaves for no reason.
So all you have to do is just file two appeals, right.
That's very good. Yes. It's critical.
And then once you get a hearing date for those,
you will have about ten days to prepare your case.
That means you have to
prepare whatever documentation you have.
If you have any witnesses that you want to bring into
the hearing, I would say do some research on the judge.
There's not a lot of information about them out there.
We happened to know judges.
I think it's really critical to understand who your
judge is because not all judges are the same,
and they are your target audience, and some of
them are a little more conservative.
Some of them tend to understand things more quickly.
Others understand things not as fast, and you have
to explain things in multiple ways to them.
We're trying to make them clear through your testimony.
All these things have to be prepared for.
And there are also a lot of new judges out
there because they're trying to meet the demand for hearings.
So there's a few curveballs on the way to
a hearing that you have to take into consideration.
One tip that I have for people who are
considering going to hearing for an overpayment is prepare
yourself to be taken a little bit off guard
with the questions that you're going to receive.
Not everything is this is not scripted.
This is very much kind of like an improv type of
thing where you really have to roll with the punches.
And sometimes that means understanding what the law is coming
in with a clear plan and strategy coming prepared with
the documents that you need, knowing exactly what message you
want to get across to the judge and trying to
figure out what is the best way to get the
message across giving who the judge is.
There is one other thing to remember is
that when you have an overpayment as a
result of a termination or voluntary quit, your
employer will probably be at the hearing.
So you're going to get some pushback at the hearing.
That's kind of an unpleasant position
for people to be in.
Sometimes that they have to confront
their employers or meet their boss.
Maybe things didn't end on the best note when you
left the work and you have to prepare yourself for
that, you have to be prepared to be cross examined
by the employer and cross examine them.
Sometimes the cross examination is the most important
part because if you were terminated from a
job, it's the burden of the employer to
show that you were terminated from his conduct.
And if they bring not just the
HR, but they bring your coworker and
your direct supervisor to come and testify.
People who actually know about what happened, they might
be able to push the burden over to you.
And your only way to sort of beat that is by cross
exam to mening that you do in some cases have to have,
I think, good representation to be ready for all of that and
to be able to put up a fight against an employer that
is trying to push back against your benefits.
You just never know what's going to happen.
Some may be able to seek an overpayment waiver
if they're issued a notice of overpayment, and they
want to have that waived because they feel that
perhaps it was an unjust decision.
Perhaps it causes severe financial hardship.
The Edd has provided very limited
information on this overpayment waiver.
There is one line in the overpayment notice, very
small that references it, and that's about it.
The Edd contact that I have has
not elaborated on this at all.
They have told me more information is
coming for the last six months.
What can you tell us
about obtaining an overpayment waiver?
So I'm really glad we're talking about this
because this is such an important point.
The waiver is really claimants last line of defense
when it comes to stopping an overpayment from plaguing
their lives for many, many years, especially if the
amount of money they have to pay back is
tens of thousands of dollars.
Hopefully you have other ways to address
an overpayment before you get to waiver.
What I want people to understand is that a
waiver is not a free pass to just collect
benefits and get a waiver from a judge because
it's covered and everyone understands that it's hard.
That's not how it works.
You have to be very careful.
And when you go ask a judge for
a waiver, you have to be very prepared.
A waiver has a number of elements to it.
There's a threshold element which is fault.
People misunderstand fault for some kind of bad intent.
Fault is actually any action that you took
that put into motion the payment to you
of benefits you're not entitled to receive.
Meaning you did or didn't do something
that caused you need to pay your
benefits you weren't supposed to receive.
That's a very low threshold, and I suspect a
lot of people are going to not be able
to overcome that threshold or at least might do
something in the hearing or say something in the
hearing that would cause them to misrepresent.
What was going on to try to convince the judge
that they weren't trying to steal money, but that's not
the standard and they're going to end up with fault,
and the judge won't be even able to consider waiver.
The second one is financial hardship.
Again, financial hardship.
It's not as simple as it sounds.
You have to demonstrate that it would be
against good conscience and equity for you to
have to pay back that money.
There's a direct relationship between the amount of
money that you owe and the judge will
conduct an inquiry into your finances.
So there's a direct relationship between the
money you owe and your finances.
And a lot of lines are going to be drawn.
Very important to remember that your appeal hearing
is the only opportunity you're going to get
to have a judge considering a waiver.
The Edd want to consider you for a waiver.
They don't talk to you.
They don't inquire about your finances they don't really
do anything except for looking at your file and
decide whether you should get a waiver or not.
I've seen a lot of people where it was
obvious they should get a waiver and they still
decided not to give it to them.
So really, the only time you get a fair
shot at a waiver is at the hearing.
So handle this with care.
Handle this with a lot of consideration and thought,
because if you just waltz into it, you're going
to end up with 20 $30,000 in debt with
a 10% annual interest with the Edd, which quite
honestly collects money like a shark lender and there's
not going to be any way out of it.
I'm afraid to say so really handle with caution
and just understand that it's better to try to
reverse overpayment on the merits, meaning to show that
you were in fact self employed or that you
did leave your job for a good reason.
And the law does qualify you to receive benefits before you
go to the waiver option, because that's really the last before
you end up with let me know the order.
Should you first appeal the decision and then apply
for an overpayment waiver if that does not go
through or what's the best process here?
If someone is trying to go through that overpayment process,
so those things usually go together, you file an appeal
and you get a chance to make your argument for
eligibility and also make your argument for waiver.
But what I'm trying to say is don't
go into the hearing just asking for waiver.
You have to use every tool that you
have in your toolbox to fight the overpayment.
And the first tool that you have in your
toolbox is to argue that you are eligible.
You're overpaid right now because determined retroactively that
you're not eligible, so fight that first, then
fall back would be a waiver.
The reason is because you have much less control
over the waiver because the thresholds are so low
just to be able to meet it.
And you can control the facts
that already happened in the past.
If the record shows that you entered incorrect information
about your wages or the record shows something else
about why you have an overpayment and you caused
that, although you caused it unintentionally, you're not going
to be eligible for waiver.
We're talking about people who have just gotten
back on their feet after this pandemic.
The people who end up with those over payments
are not the ones who have strong businesses who
received probably nice hefty PPP loans or disaster loans.
These are the people who are literally at
the bottom of that financial totem pole.
Those are the people who do the gig
work and are starting off their careers.
And so they're the ones that get hurt the
most by this ineptitude by the ADB and it's
crazy that just go away the fees and the
interest will compound it's a huge problem. Yes.
That's why, Jeanne, I really have to reiterate again.
Okay, it's so important that this is the
moment that those people have to act.
They have to use this opportunity.
Don't just say, oh, it's the government. Get about it.
I'll just disappear and never hear from you again.
Don't say those things because you're just going to
make your problem so much more difficult to fix.
This is the moment to confront this.
Fight it and reverse it and mitigate
it to the best of your ability.
You might not be able to get rid of
all of it, but you can get rid of
some of it and just put this problem into.