Unemployment Repayment Trial?
employment attorney Minnesota Jul 21, 2026
Location: Minnesota TL;DR: my sister is getting involved in an unemployment trial because the boss that fired her wants her to pay back the unemployment she received and a lot of the discovery against her is BS. She can’t afford a lawyer—are there any legal assistance programs she could look into to help her prepare for her phone trial? We have no idea what we’re doing Backstory: My sister (30F—who lives and works in Minnesota) was fired from her job as a manager at a non-profit because it “wasn’t working out” at the company— to my knowledge she was not given any other reasons for being let go. She was let go without any warning, or any behaviors or actions she had at work being brought up to her for any sort of written warnings or plans for improvement at the job or that were brought up as reasons for her being fired. To my knowledge, she was given very little training as the previous manager quit due to issues with the executive director (the person who fired my sister) and she had to figure out how to properly do the job with little instruction for how she needed to do things. My sister attempted multiple times to have conversations with the director to gain more insight about her specific duties and what the director felt was her overstepping as my sister was getting frustrated with lack of communication. Her director would brush her off and avoid meeting with her. After she was let go she took some unemployment while she looked for another job, and she did get a new job that she is with now. Now, several months after she got a notice that she needs to appear for a phone trial with Minnesota unemployment because her director wants her to pay the unemployment back? As an outsider it seems to me that this director just doesn’t want to pay for the unemployment and has now made a case that my sister was “incompetent” and rightfully let go. The discovery packet was mailed to my sister and a lot of the points that this director brought up are either incorrect or out of context with most items being things that she “did wrong” during training when she wasn’t actually trained on and left to her own devices to figure out on her own. She has the phone trial in the next couple of weeks. We can’t afford to hire a lawyer and have no idea how this process even goes. Are there any resources we could use to figure out how to go through this process so she can adequately defend herself against the allegations against her and prevent her from having to pay back unemployment she rightfully received due to the circumstances of her termination? She was told to put together discovery but she isn’t allowed access to the app all of the communications she had with her director are on as she lost access to her log in after she was let go. Do we need to subpoena those conversations from her executive director? She also had a meeting with a member of the board of directors prior to her getting let go where she discussed concerns she had with the professionalism with the executive director and this member supposedly took notes. Is there a specific way discovery needs to be collected and presented to be valid? Should she have letters from previous employers on her dependability?
