Recovering Overpayments

David Congreave · Posted: Mon May 08, 2006 11:26 am Post subject: Recovering Overpayments

This is a question from one of our readers.

Ian Congreave · Posted: Tue May 09, 2006 6:49 am Post subject: Recovering overpayments

I am not an expert on US labor and wage laws but my own look at this is that, first of all, there are no federal laws that apply to this situation. There are garnishment laws that require employers to apply a court order, but nothing on recovering overpayments.

All of New Jersey's wage and hour laws are listed at http://www.state.nj.us/labor/lsse/wagehour.html but there does not appear to be any legislation about recovering overpayments.
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Ian Whyteside · Posted: Wed Jun 14, 2006 12:26 pm Post subject: Recovering Overpayments

Just to add to Ian's comments all I can say is that the USA education standards for payroll seem to follow the general guidance and best practice in the UK that agreement and written permission ought to be obtained, though this does not always follow state by state.

My payroll offices over the years have dealt with many US citizens and the only oddity we came across was a general belief in the US that if you are overpaid by someone where you played no part in the overpayment the payer was not permitted to recover.

As Ian has mentioned there are no laws governing this, we checked at the time out of curiosity more than anything else, it just seemed to be a generally accepted practice.

Personally I would approach this in the way we do in the UK and get written agreement, that seems to me to be good practice anywhere.

Ian Whyteside