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Towards the end of last year I had a post about my wife and some issues she was having at work, basically the company was having financial trouble and the owner quit depositing the staffs 401k withholding and matched contributions into their accounts and was pocketing it for himself. My wife was missing something like $2500 in withholding and $2000 in matched contributions. And to top it all off payroll taxes were never paid. When we were forced to call the IRS for not recieving a W2 they had no record of my wife working all year.
She has since found new employment so all is good there.
The problem we have been facing now, the owner still has not fixed the issue. The Dept of Labor is now involved, but honest truth they seem to be completely useless. They told me what has happened is a crime but due to having so many other cases this one is towards the bottom of the list and likelihood of going to court is slim to none, so really all they can do is harass the owner to fix it. So they call him several times weekly and tell him to fix it, thats it, nothing more and nothing less. To top it off the owner is holding the 401k account ransom. There are papers he is required to sign so we can withdraw the money, but he refuses to sign them because its some sort of legal thing, where if we withdraw the money it closes the 401k account and then the missing money becomes stolen money. If he doesn't sign the papers then we just sort of sit in a limbo of what happened is illegal but no one has time to deal with it at this point. At least that is how I understand it.
They told me to feel free to take my own legal action as well so I have been thinking about it. My options would be to go to small claims court or start a full on lawsuit.
My question is does this sound like the right plan of attack? I guess what I am getting at is, if I attempt to sue and almost out of business company how can I ensure I actually get paid and I am not just wasting more time and money? I feel like I will win but then the owner will just continue to ignore us rather than pay up.
Any comments?
She has since found new employment so all is good there.
The problem we have been facing now, the owner still has not fixed the issue. The Dept of Labor is now involved, but honest truth they seem to be completely useless. They told me what has happened is a crime but due to having so many other cases this one is towards the bottom of the list and likelihood of going to court is slim to none, so really all they can do is harass the owner to fix it. So they call him several times weekly and tell him to fix it, thats it, nothing more and nothing less. To top it off the owner is holding the 401k account ransom. There are papers he is required to sign so we can withdraw the money, but he refuses to sign them because its some sort of legal thing, where if we withdraw the money it closes the 401k account and then the missing money becomes stolen money. If he doesn't sign the papers then we just sort of sit in a limbo of what happened is illegal but no one has time to deal with it at this point. At least that is how I understand it.
They told me to feel free to take my own legal action as well so I have been thinking about it. My options would be to go to small claims court or start a full on lawsuit.
My question is does this sound like the right plan of attack? I guess what I am getting at is, if I attempt to sue and almost out of business company how can I ensure I actually get paid and I am not just wasting more time and money? I feel like I will win but then the owner will just continue to ignore us rather than pay up.
Any comments?
