Help! HR messed up my FMLA leave and wants $$ back from me.

[Guest danmar]

I recently quit a large fortune-500 firm to try my hand at self employment. For a variety of reasons, I decided to leave at the same time that my baby son was born. Since I didn't know the exact date he would be born or when I would stop working, and also because I wanted to make sure I would receive my year 2000 year-end bonus, I decided to take an UNPAID 3 week FMLA leave of absence and then quit. I informed my boss and his boss of my intentions and they agreed to allow me to do this. I left on very good terms. I could have used some of my remaining PTO vacation time to cover this leave, but I didn't think that would be fair to the company, so I opted to use only unpaid FMLA leave.

However, the company's HR department messed up. They took several weeks to process my unpaid FMLA request and ended up paying me for 8 days of work during my leave.

I was busy with my newborn son when I noticed that HR had messed up and that too much money had been direct deposited into my bank account. At the time, I figured this was par for the course--in the seven years I worked at that company, HR has always been unfriendly, beaurucratic, and incompetent.

That was a month and a half ago. Now, I got a letter from HR that they want me to return $1100 for those 8 days of leave. This creates a big cash flow problem for me and I am loathe to return it. To me, it seems like I did everything in my power to try to NOT receive this money and did nothing to actively receive it--it was automatically direct deposited.

How should I respond to the company's request? I understand that I should not have received the deposit, but then again, I never agreed to be their corporate escrow account to protect the company against their own incompetence. At this point, what can they do? Any suggestions?

[Guest Benefits Maven]

Sorry, but even the best of HR depts goof up occasionally. You knew you were not supposed to receive that money, you noticed you had, you did nothing about it at the time. They are well within their rights to demand it back.

[Guest Ray Williams]

If you knew that money had been deposited to your account that did not belong to you, why did you spend it?

[Guest lmrice]

The other posters are correct. You need to return the money. You shouldn't really even be questioning it.

[RCK]

I agree with everyone else--you should return the money. I would add that generally you are responsible for notifying HR on what you're going to be doing- not just notifying "my boss and his boss".

Seems like there is plenty of blame to go around, and everybody should get a portion.

[Guest danmar]

Thanks for everyone's input--my personal friends agree, too. I agree that I'll need to reimburse it. It seemed more ambiguous to me when I first got the letter because of how difficult HR made the whole leave process for me in the first place and the way that the tone of the letter I received contrasted with all other aspects of how I left the company. Mulling the whole thing over makes it seem much more straightforward, though. Still, I wish they hadn't made this mistake in the first place and were more careful.

Thanks.