Employers who tell an employee to 'retire' should be prepared to pay

Since retirement is the natural order of things and thousands of people retire every week, you would think the process would have been all worked out by now. Photo by Getty Images/iStockphoto / iStockphoto

By Howard Levitt and Peter Carey

“To everything there is a season.” So says the Bible and the Byrds. Sooner or later (usually later), most employees start thinking about retiring — except lawyers. Old lawyers don’t retire, they just lose their appeal!

Since retirement is the natural order of things and thousands of people retire every week, you would think the process would have been all worked out by now. Unfortunately, this is not the case. We frequently encounter situations where both employers and employees are at odds about when the employee will retire. These situations ofte