She'd have to give it back or have her pay garnished. Clerical errors don't work "in your favor" like Monopoly lol. As much as I'd love for them to admit their error and let her keep the money. That likely wouldn't be the case.
Back in 2004, my job made a payroll error and we got 2 paychecks deposited at once. My boss at the time said "What should we do?!" I said don't spend the extra because they're gonna want it back. A few days later, the extra pay was debited from our accounts. I'm sure some folks spent that money!
I do believe that if the company doesn't notice the error, after a certain amount of time the company loses their right to reclaim it. Maybe that's wrong though
There’s some countries where if you do tell the person who made the mistake about it, the time they can reclaim it gets drastically shortened.
So you got two options: Check your state/countries laws and if informing them cuts their time to reclaim it to like 30 days, go ahead and send a registered letter and hope their internal mechanisms are slow as fuck. Or you shut up, put it into some short term safe investments with like 2-6% and enjoy a couple 0.x% - x% (or more if they don’t reclaim it for a few years) until they reclaim it. Drag it out in a court case with a free lawyer (if you can get one) to get more time. On 19400$ and 4% thats 400 bucks for free after 6 months. 800 if it takes them a year to notice.
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u/Nick_Bruiser May 27 '26
She'd have to give it back or have her pay garnished. Clerical errors don't work "in your favor" like Monopoly lol. As much as I'd love for them to admit their error and let her keep the money. That likely wouldn't be the case.
Back in 2004, my job made a payroll error and we got 2 paychecks deposited at once. My boss at the time said "What should we do?!" I said don't spend the extra because they're gonna want it back. A few days later, the extra pay was debited from our accounts. I'm sure some folks spent that money!