July 1st, 2010

In a post from last week, I wrote about how the California EDD is claiming an overpayment on Jen’s unemployment benefits, and that they’re expecting to get this money back. Along with the letter that (sorta) explained the reasons for the overpayment was a request-for-waiver form. The idea is that, if you feel you shouldn’t have to repay on the overpayment, you fill out the request-for-waiver form and send it back to the EDD. They’ll use the information provided on the form to determine whether or not they’ll continue pursuing the collection of the overpayment. I’m not entirely certain what criteria the EDD uses to make this decision. They don’t bother to tell you that. Regardless, I spent my evening last Tuesday filling out this form.

Oh, the boxes! So many little boxes that required filling in. There was the usual stuff: Name, address, phone number. For some reason, the form asked for Jen’s driver’s license number. No idea why. The bulk of the form had to do with our household income, assets and financial liabilities. I had to list all of our gross income for the last six months. I did the best I could using information from our bank’s website. Overall, I gave them a pretty accurate picture of our gross income. But, it was hardly drawn out to the last penny.

The form then wanted to know if we rent or own our home. I always find this to be a bit of a confusing question. We live in a mobile home park. We have a mortgage on the structure we live in. We pay space rent to the owner of the mobile home park. I checked off the “own” box and in the “monthly cost” box, I entered the total cost we pay per month in both space rent and mortgage. I don’t know if this was actually the proper thing to do, but I feel like it’s an accurate representation of our overall monthly housing expenses. Along similar lines, the form required a list of creditors along with balances owed and monthly payments. Since the form didn’t specifically ask for “minimum payments,” I put down the amounts I’ve been paying to these creditors, which are all above the minimums, as I’m trying to pay them off as quickly as possible. Again, I don’t know if this is exactly what they want to know. But since they don’t really give you any help with these things, I feel like it’s up to my interpretation of the instructions.

From there, the form asked about savings and investments. I put down a modest number based on what I know of the time of Jen’s savings account. The form also wanted to know what kind of cars we have and if we own them or owe money on them. I’m not sure how much actual value the EDD can hope to add to the equation based on Jen’s 1994 Chevy Cavalier (the only vehicle we own) but, whatever. There it is.

Finally, the request-for-waiver form needed to know the value of our home and if we held any equity in it. I really wasn’t sure what to put down. The last time our mobile home was appraised was about five years ago. Given the nature of the housing market now compared to then, I’m certain this place would not appraise for the same value. (No ones property is likely to do that.) So, I marked down that the home is worth what we currently owe on our mortgage. In which case, we have zero equity. Once more, I have no idea if this is actually the right thing to do. But, I think it is.

It seems that what’s happening here is, the EDD is trying to figure out if we have enough spare income to cover the return of the overpayment. I’m not sure if the EDD takes into account the fact that this overpayment was created by their own reevaluation of Jen’s income. Something we had no idea they would do, and hence, had no way to prepare for/prevent. If they had just done this in the first place, then her initial benefit amount wouldn’t have been overestimated to begin with. But, whatever. This little slip of the bureaucracy… that’s just our fault. Somehow.

I really doubt that filling out the waiver request form will actually do any good, and I kinda resent the EDD for having to do it. At the time, I said to Jen that it would take me at least a couple hours to get it done, and that I didn’t really believe it’d make any difference. She asked me if the amount of money we could potentially save by not having to pay the overpayment would be worth the time if we knew for sure it would go our way. And of course the answer to that is an emphatic yes. No matter how it goes, at least we’ll know we did all we could have done. For now.

Tags: life, money
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