Deadline for Notice of Early Termination of COBRA

[401 Chaos]

As I understand it, the general rule is that a plan administrator must provide a Notice of Early Termination of COBRA coverage "as soon as practicable" after a decision to terminate has been made. Seems in cases where that termination is known prior to coverage terminating (e.g., where the employer decides to terminate all group health plans and thus will terminate COBRA as of some set future date), then the Notice may (must?) be sent even in advance of the termination.

What about the timing where termination is a result of the participant's failure to make timely COBRA premium payments. In particular, if a plan gives folks basically 40 days after the payment date to make a termination decision (30 day grace period plus a few extra days to see if mail postmarked as of deadline date comes in) and then takes a week or so to generate and send the Notice of Early Termination. Is that soon enough? Is anybody aware of cases or rulings where a period of time has been suggested? In this case, failure to send the notice out immediately or very shortly after the payment deadline was missed eats into the participants 63-day period for lining up alternative coverage without adverse consequences.

[401 Chaos]

Just wanted to bump this up.

From what I've been able to find, this all seems a facts and circumstances test but there does seem some basis that one of the reasons for the required notice was so that terminated individuals might be put on notice of the lack of coverage in sufficient time to avoid the 63-day break in service issue if possible.

Although notice in our case was given prior to the 63-day period running, it wasn't given by much and the individual is trying to call foul. Of course, the employer here really has traditionally given a slightly longer grace period for premiums and has even on occasion reminded participants that their premiums were due. Now they find themselves being painted as the bad guy.

I have not previously run into this issue before and seriously doubt had this individual been given plenty of notice they would have arranged for individual or other coverage to avoid the 63-day break but suppose that may be possible.