What do you do if your employer goes bankrupt?

Secure your rights when your employer goes bankrupt

When your employer goes bankrupt, it's important to know what you need to do to secure your rights. Here you can read about how you can get unemployment benefits if your employer goes bankrupt.

Benefits in connection with bankruptcy

From the moment the bankruptcy order is issued, you can apply for unemployment benefits. A bankruptcy decree is the decision made by the bankruptcy court when it declares a company bankrupt. The bankruptcy decree is issued at a specific time, for example on November 23, 2023 at 10:42. It is important to note that your employer is not considered bankrupt until the official decree is issued.

As an employee of a company that has gone bankrupt, you can be protected in two ways:

• You can submit your claims to the Employees' Guarantee Fund (LG). LG is an insurance fund that ensures that you are paid your missing salary, salary during the notice period, vacation pay, pension and the like. LG can pay you a maximum of DKK 160,000 after tax. You can also file a claim for any holiday pay you are owed.
• You can also file claims that LG does not cover directly with the bankruptcy estate. This is called a privileged claim. Having a preferential claim means that your claim will be covered before other creditors. However, it's far from certain that you'll get your entire claim covered. It depends on how much money there is in the bankruptcy estate. It is the trustee's job to calculate the bankruptcy estate.

Deadlines for submitting claims

• The deadline for filing a claim with LG is 4 months from the issuance of the bankruptcy order.
• The deadline for filing claims with the bankruptcy estate is 4 weeks from the issuance of the bankruptcy order.

Get help from your union

We recommend that you seek help from your trade union. If you are not a member of a trade union, you can seek help from Retshjælpen. They can guide you in connection with your employer's bankruptcy. The actual notification of your claim to LG takes place via borger.dk.

My unemployment fund helps you with unemployment benefits

While LG is processing your case, we can pay you unemployment benefits as a loan during your notice period. All you need to do is assign your claim against LG to us. You can do this by filling out the form AR290 Declaration of assignment in connection with LG cases and send it to us via Self Service together with a copy of your claim to LG. To get the loan from Min A-kasse, you must be entitled to unemployment benefits, complete a declaration of unemployment and be registered as "unemployed without benefits" on jobnet.dk. The loan can be granted from the day you are registered on jobnet.dk at the earliest.

If LG only covers part of your notice period, you may be able to receive unemployment benefits for the rest of the period if you transfer your claim against the estate or bankruptcy estate to Min A-kasse to cover the missing amount.

Once LG has finalized your case, they will pay your compensation to Min A-kasse. We set off the amount you borrowed from us and pay the rest to you.