This. Exactly this. My husband took a buyout with 10 other employees at his company and was told that he’d be eligible for unemployment once his severance period ended. He applied, he got the payments. Then the company gave some bullshit reason why he wasn’t eligible, and his claim was ended — he stopped getting the payments with no notice whatsoever. We appealed, the hearing officer sided with the company, so we appealed again. In the meantime, I started researching our state’s employment law and found a precedent for our argument. At the final appeal (a phone call with an administrative law judge), my husband had the talking points organized and mentioned that case. We won. If we had lost the case, we would have been required to pay back the payments we had already received.

The interesting thing is that the other people who took the buyout at the same time as my husband got unemployment with no problem.

The lesson here is: Learn about cases involving employers who do similar things, and fight, fight, fight. These shitty companies are getting away this kind of thing. They should not.