The Severance Counter, From Offered Package to a Signed Improvement

You were just laid off and handed a severance agreement with a deadline to sign. This guide runs the counter as a dated process, from the hour the offer lands to a signed, improved agreement, so you know what to do on which day rather than only what the clauses mean. It is written for workers negotiating alone or deciding whether to bring in counsel, and it is built around the statutory review clock that governs the whole move.

The single most common mistake is treating the signing deadline in the cover letter as the real clock. It usually is not. Before you do anything else, you need to know which clock you are on.

What clock are you actually on

If you are 40 or older, the law guarantees you a minimum review period that the employer cannot shorten, and a revocation window after signing that no one can waive. This is the backbone of the whole counter, because the review window is the time you use to build and send your ask.

Under the Older Workers Benefit Protection Act, which amends the ADEA, a valid waiver of age-discrimination claims must give you at least 21 days to consider an individual agreement. If the waiver is requested in connection with an exit incentive or other employment termination program offered to a group or class of employees, the minimum is at least 45 days. Both tracks come with a 7-day revocation period after you sign, during which you may revoke and the agreement does not become effective or enforceable.

The period runs from the date of the employer's final offer. That matters because a material change to the final offer restarts the running of the clock, while a non-material change does not, and the parties may agree in the document that no change restarts it.

Here are the statutory clocks, laid out by track.

The group track triggers for a class of as few as two individuals. That threshold is low enough that many routine layoffs qualify, which pulls in both the 45-day period and the disclosure list covered below. If you are under 40, these specific minimums are not guaranteed to you by OWBPA, but the review and revocation structure in your document still governs what you sign, so read it with the same care.

Which document in the stack is the leverage

The group disclosure attachment is the most important document in the package, and most people never read it. In a group termination program, the employer must disclose in writing the decisional unit, the eligibility criteria, the time frame for the program, and the ages and job titles of every employee selected for termination alongside those in the same unit who were not selected.

That attachment does two things at once. It can expose an age pattern in who was cut. And a defective disclosure can void the ADEA waiver entirely, which is why it is leverage rather than paperwork.

The mechanics make this sharp. A defective OWBPA waiver does not bar an ADEA claim, and under Oubre v. Entergy Operations the employee does not have to return the severance to bring that claim. The employer cannot cure a defective waiver by later sending the OWBPA information it left out. So a flawed attachment quietly converts a signature demand into negotiating room: you hold both the severance and a potential claim.

You do not need to accuse anyone of discrimination to use this. Simply knowing the disclosure exists, and whether it is complete, changes how you weigh the offer and how firmly you can hold your counter.

What to ask for, and what each component is worth

Pick two or three components and push those. A counter that touches eight items reads as unreasonable and stalls; focusing on two or three specific items keeps momentum and keeps you credible. The most negotiable levers are the number of weeks of pay, a COBRA subsidy, equity acceleration or a longer exercise window, outplacement, and the exact language of reference and non-disparagement clauses.

Cash severance has a well-known anchor. Per SHRM the most common formula is one to two weeks of base salary per year worked, and practitioners push two to three weeks per year, varying by role, level, and industry. Use that as your external benchmark rather than a number pulled from your own budget.

Two components are consistently underweighted. The first is health coverage. COBRA lets you continue your current insurance for up to 18 months, but at full cost, and family coverage can run $600 to $1,500 per month. Six months of employer-paid premiums could save $3,600 to $9,000, often more than an extra week or two of pay. If coverage is a worry, a COBRA subsidy can beat a cash-weeks ask dollar for dollar.

The second is the equity exercise window, the highest-stakes and least-negotiated line. The standard post-termination window for stock options is 90 days, and it is possible to negotiate a longer one; a few companies, notably Pinterest, Coinbase, and Amplitude, offer 10-year windows. But the 90-day ISO clock is federally fixed under IRC 422(a)(2): incentive stock options convert to non-qualified options at day 91 even if the window itself is extended. So frame an equity ask around tax timing, not just calendar duration, and get help if the numbers are large.

How the counter moves from offer to signature

This is the full procedure, from the hour the offer lands to a signed improvement. Each step names who does it and roughly when, so you can work it against your review deadline rather than against the cover letter's artificial one.

How to anchor so the counter reads as researched

Anchor every ask in objective factors, tenure, role level, market benchmarks, and company precedent, rather than personal financial need. Need invites sympathy, not concessions; a benchmark invites a counter-benchmark, which is the conversation you want.

Two tactics do most of the work. First, never disclose your minimum acceptable offer. Anchor high and trade down on your lower-priority items, keeping your floor private throughout. Second, avoid round numbers. A figure like 14 weeks reads as the output of research, while 12 reads as a guess, and research-looking anchors are what justify counters reportedly reaching 25 to 100 percent above the opening offer.

Round numbers sound like wishes. Non-round numbers sound like someone who did the math.

Sequence matters too. Lead with neutral items first, such as the reference script and timing of the last day, then move to economics, then to legal clauses. Neutral items are easy yeses that build momentum before you reach the lines the employer cares most about defending. Keep the whole thing to a single concise document: an email or one page, with appreciation first, each item stated with a proposed number and a one-line rationale.

Subject: Response to severance agreement dated [date]

Thank you for the agreement and for the support through this transition. I have reviewed it carefully and would like to propose a small number of adjustments before signing.

1. Reference and timing. I would ask that we agree on a neutral written reference script, attached, and confirm my departure date as [date].

2. Cash severance. The agreement offers [X weeks]. Given [N] years of tenure and the one-to-two-week-per-year norm cited by SHRM, with my role level in mind, I propose [non-round figure, e.g. 14] weeks.

3. Health coverage. In place of [or alongside] the above, I propose [4-6] months of employer-paid COBRA premiums, which reflects the gap I expect before new coverage begins.

I have kept this to the items that matter most to me and am glad to discuss. I understand my consideration period runs through [date] and the 7-day revocation that follows signing.

With appreciation,
[Name]

Where severance counters go wrong

Most failed counters fail on process, not on nerve. Each mode below has a false positive, the thing that looks fine but is not, and a check you can run before it costs you.

• Mistaking the signing deadline for the statutory clock. The letter says sign in 7 days and you comply. Check: for workers 40+, the law guarantees 21 or 45 days regardless of the letter, and an agreement requiring a 7-day sign is invalid as to the ADEA waiver.
• Assuming a revision reset your clock. Not every change is material. Check: confirm the change is material, and watch for a clause where the parties pre-agree that no change restarts the period.
• Reading the revocation window as optional. The employer pays on day 1 and calls the deal final. Check: no payment before day 8, and any revocation must be made in writing to the designated recipient.
• Over-asking across every line. A counter touching eight items reads as unreasonable and stalls. Check: limit yourself to two or three prioritized items.
• Round-number anchoring with no external basis. "I want 20 weeks" with nothing behind it. Check: tie each figure to tenure or market and use non-round numbers.
• Ignoring the group disclosure attachment. Signing without reading the ages and titles list. Check: read it for an age pattern and for a defect that could void the waiver in your favor.
• Treating a short exercise window as harmless. You sign, then the 90-day ISO clock forces a cash-and-AMT crunch. Check: model the tax timing before signing, not after.
• Self-managing a high-risk exit. You negotiate alone when the exit followed a complaint or involves equity. Check: match the exit to the trigger signals below before deciding to go it alone.

When to bring in an attorney, and who is actually out there

Bring in an employment attorney when specific trigger signals are present, not as a default for every exit. It matters most when you were terminated after a complaint, conflict, or performance review; are part of a restructuring layoff; are long-tenured or held a leadership role; are in a protected class; or your pay includes commissions, bonuses, or equity grants. One calculator site sets a dollar threshold: any agreement with total value over $10,000 warrants a professional review.

Attorneys affect outcomes by spotting unenforceable clauses, quantifying restrictions, and negotiating on your behalf. The exact average dollar uplift from using one is not publicly established, so I will not put a number on it; judge the cost against the trigger signals and the total value at stake.

The harder problem is that help supply is lopsided toward encouragement rather than legal firepower.

Here is the help-supply pool as it stands in Refolk's index of professional profiles.

The takeaway is practical. Coaches and even compensation benchmarkers are abundant, so use them for the parts of this work they fit, setting anchors and stress-testing your weeks-per-year number. But the person who can tell you whether a group disclosure is defective is comparatively rare, so if your exit hits a trigger signal, start that search early. Refolk writes your materials and scores your fit for the roles you will apply to next, which frees your review window for the counter itself rather than the rebuild. When you need named people to approach, you can run a plain-language search over the same index.

To find the scarce resource rather than the abundant one, search for people, not articles. A query like the one below returns attorneys who specifically handle employee-side waiver review.

Refolk turns Refolk that kind of search into a list of real people you can contact, which is the difference between reading about leverage and reaching someone who can confirm you hold it.

Verify before you sign

Run this list before you put your name on anything. It is the final gate between a good counter and a signed improvement that actually holds.

How to keep this current

Two things in this playbook move over time, and both have a mechanism you can re-check rather than a value to memorize. The statutory minimums, 21 days, 45 days, and the 7-day revocation, come from 29 CFR 1625.22 and the EEOC's waiver guidance; confirm them against the current regulation and guidance before you rely on them, since the specific figures in your document are what bind you. The market norms, the weeks-per-year formula and the COBRA and exercise-window ranges, are practitioner-reported and drift with industry and conditions; re-benchmark against a current comp source or a total-rewards professional when you set your anchors.

The counter itself does not change. Preserve the documents, calculate both clocks, read the disclosure, pick two or three anchored asks, send one written counter, paper every concession, and sign only after the revised agreement still protects your revocation. Run it in that order and you are negotiating from the clock the law gives you, not the one the cover letter tried to impose.