Get advice, not opinions

If it has not happened yet, this is the only page that matters today.

At risk of redundancy. In consultation. A settlement or compromise agreement in front of you with a date on it. This stage is legal, it has deadlines, and it is the one stage where a website is close to useless.

Get advice today rather than this month

An employment solicitor, or a free employment advice service if there is one where you live. Early advice is cheap relative to what it protects, and late advice is sometimes worth nothing at all because a deadline has passed.

Two things men routinely do not know. Settlement and compromise agreements usually cannot be signed without independent legal advice, and employers very commonly pay for that advice — ask whether yours will. And some household or motor insurance policies include legal expenses cover that people forget they are paying for.

What to put in front of an adviser

Go with questions written down. It shortens the meeting and it stops you paying for thinking time.

What are the deadlines that apply to me, and what is the first one? Is this process what it appears to be? What am I entitled to, and how does it compare with what I have been offered? What exactly am I giving up if I sign this? What does this restrict me from doing afterwards, and for how long? What will be said if someone asks for a reference? Is there anything I should not do or say before we speak again?

Take the documents to them. Do not put them into this site, into the chat, or into any other AI tool.

The half this site can help with

You are having two conversations at once, and they get tangled. The legal one is about what you are owed and what you must decide by when. It belongs to a solicitor.

The other one is about what you actually want next, and it is easy to lose entirely while the process is running. James's observation is that men who separated the two negotiated better, because they stopped treating the settlement as a verdict on their worth and started treating it as a transaction with a deadline.

Notice, too, when you are being rushed. Being hurried is a normal feature of these processes and it is not a reason to decide anything before you have taken advice.

Talk that half through

If it has already happened

Then this page is behind you, and what actually went is the more useful one.