The day you got laid off, a handful of countdown timers started running. Nobody read them out loud at the exit meeting, they don't show up in your severance packet as a tidy list, and a few of them will quietly cost you real money if they expire before you act. The good news is that most of these deadlines come from federal law, not company policy. Whatever your packet says, whatever HR implied, the law sets the floor. Here's each clock, how long it runs, and what to do before it hits zero.
You have 21 to 45 days to review a severance agreement
If you're 40 or older and your severance agreement asks you to waive age discrimination claims, the Older Workers Benefit Protection Act requires your employer to give you at least 21 days to consider it. In a group layoff, that becomes 45 days. You also get 7 days after signing to revoke.
Here's the part worth repeating. A shorter deadline printed in your packet does not override federal law. Companies write "please return by Friday" into severance paperwork all the time, and people sign under pressure that the law says they don't have to feel. Use the time. Read the release clauses, especially anything about non-disparagement and giving up your right to sue. Our severance agreement breakdown walks through the traps clause by clause.
If you're under 40, no federal review period applies, but you can still ask for time. A company that refuses to give you a weekend to read a legal document is telling you something about the document.
You have 60 days to elect COBRA
When employer coverage ends, you have 60 days to elect COBRA continuation coverage, measured from the later of the date you lost coverage or the date you received the election notice. Coverage is retroactive to the day you lost it, which means you can legally wait out most of the window uninsured on paper, then elect only if something goes wrong. That's a real strategy people use, but it requires you to actually track the date.
The same coverage loss also opens a 60-day special enrollment window on the ACA marketplace, and for most people an ACA plan with subsidies beats paying COBRA's full unsubsidized premium. We compared the numbers in our COBRA piece. The point for now is simpler. Both doors close on a timer, and if you let both lapse you're stuck waiting for open enrollment.
You have up to 60 days of H-1B grace period
If you're on an H-1B, the clock everyone dreads. USCIS regulations give you a discretionary grace period of up to 60 days after your employment ends to find a new sponsor, change status, or depart. Two details matter. It's measured from your official termination date, not the day you were told, so the exact date in your paperwork is worth confirming in writing. And it's discretionary and capped at your existing petition's validity, so it isn't a guaranteed 60 days in every case.
If this is you, the deadline eats the others. Severance negotiation, COBRA math, all of it comes second to lining up your status options in week one. Some laid-off workers have negotiated a later official termination date precisely because it extends this window, which is a severance ask worth knowing about before you sign anything.
You have 60 days to redeposit a 401(k) payout
If your former employer sends you a check for your 401(k) balance instead of doing a direct rollover, the IRS gives you 60 days to redeposit it into another retirement account. Miss the window and the whole thing becomes a taxable distribution, plus a 10% penalty if you're under 59½. Worse, the check they send you is short. Employers are required to withhold 20% for taxes on an indirect rollover, so to redeposit the full balance you have to come up with that 20% out of pocket and wait for the refund.
The clean move is to never touch the money. A direct rollover from your old plan to an IRA or your next employer's plan has no deadline and no withholding. Our 401(k) after a layoff piece covers when to roll, when to leave it, and the vesting details worth checking first.
File for unemployment in week one
Unemployment is technically not a deadline but something worse, a meter that doesn't start until you turn it on. Benefits run from the date you file, not the date you were laid off, so every week you wait is a week of money that doesn't exist and never will. Severance usually doesn't disqualify you, though some states delay payments until severance periods end, and the rules differ enough by state that it's worth checking yours specifically. Every state's numbers, rules, and filing links are in our state-by-state directory.
File the same week you're laid off, even if you think severance makes you ineligible for a while. Filing locks your claim date, and letting the state tell you no beats assuming it.
The order to do it in
If you're reading this in the first fog of a layoff, the sequence is short. File for unemployment now, confirm your official termination date in writing if you're on a visa, pin down exactly how long you have to review the severance agreement before signing anything, decide nothing about COBRA until you've priced an ACA plan, and if a 401(k) check shows up in the mail, don't cash it, call the brokerage where you want it to land, because the 60-day clock is running whether you cash it or not. Then run your actual runway numbers so every deadline decision after this one gets made with real math instead of panic.
