To quit your job, for any reason you choose, is your right as an at-will employee, which is a condition of employment unique to how most of us are employed in the United States of America.
However, if you then want, or need to collect unemployment benefits .. understand that you accepted the burden of proving the fault for quitting was in some way, attributable to the employer, or the work itself, if somehow made unsuitable for you specifically, by way of proving you first made exhaustive efforts to preserve your employment, usually by seeking assistance from your employer.
Proving a voluntary quit was with good cause means your reason for quitting, needs a potential for good cause, and if anyone asks me what offers more potential than just another sad story about why you quit .. it’s documentation created while still employed to prove you made those efforts first to save your job .. but only if weren’t discussing how to collect unemployment .. after quitting a job.
Let’s Start With better Reasoning to Quit Your Job
I provide a link to the USDOL because I couldn’t live without it’s Nonmonetary Eligibility Charts which could help anybody understand more about the most common reasons people quit jobs. Or, that state by state, when a reason may, or may not play out to a claimant’s benefit.
This is essential information to my way of thinking, if you agree you need to approach your eligibility issue objectively, to understand when there is the possibility of having good cause, meaning a reason you can later attribute as being the fault of your employer for voluntarily leaving a job with good cause .. although voluntarily, is misleading as to what it means to meet the burden of proving the employer was the party at fault for you quitting.
The state by state UI law comparison charts are a comprehensive set of resources for an unemployed person to use because they want relate to how unemployment is interpreted to work in their own state. Of course how UI work in any state, must still be grounded in the more general federal guidance, as provided to all state unemployment agencies.
But let’s face it, once you have access to charts, decision digests, or any other state unemployment resource I could find, we still don’t have an exhaustive list of the reasons people quit for good cause with nothing, but a compelling argument to make.
Which may be the reason I answered a lot of questions about quitting a job good cause and making the argument about whose fault it was on principle.
A Reason to Quit with Good Cause You Can Attribute the Fault an Employer, or not
When I am asked how to prove good cause to quit, I often feel I could of only made things better if I had had the opportunity to explain to them as an employee why it’s so important to view good cause from the perspective of being an employee understanding that’s when you preserve a future ability .. to prove relevant facts .. after the facts are cemented in time.
Both employees and employers have the opportunity to create evidence that supports .. underscores, rebuts .. and because I know nothing weights verbal testimony as being more credible at lower level unemployment hearings better, with well framed documents.
Good cause in general, can be any substantial change to the terms and conditions of your employment when you accepted a job, but much about the circumstances that create good cause to quit, is found buried within precedent decisions of a board of review, or the higher authority of an actual court, when a board of review order is appealed and the matter leaves the administrative law agency. These things aren’t possible to find for any state, but
Good personal cause to quit your job may also exist via a specific provision found in a state’s law, or a state unemployment law may not require fault to be specifically attributable to an employer, but still require a claimant to prove that as fact, via a couple words … compelling and necessitous.
However, be aware that personal reasons for quitting a job .. may also raise conditional eligibility issues such as being able and available to work, or a refusal of suitable work, such as happens to some when laid off due to a reduction in force.
Need a More Authoritative Explanation of Good Cause to Voluntarily Quit Your Job?
For my part .. I know it’s understanding you will be assigned the burden of proof after you quit .. before you quit your job, that may very well be your best, if not only strategic advantage to collect, or keep collecting benefits.
This goes for those of you quitting in lieu of being terminated, maybe because you first tried to preserve their job. The point is, when you quit .. instead of letting an employer fire you as your only other alternative, even a resignation letter becomes a document that should prompt the UI department to understand why they need to assign the burden to the employer, so they can prove misconduct .. while you just rebut the assertion with facts that explain the real cause form termination .. quasi-legally speaking.
Somewhat legally, it’s how unemployment law, or any other form of administrative law, is designed to work. And the nature of UI is never more apparent .. than when you have to participate in an unemployment appeal hearing .. regardless of who filed the appeal.
So here’s the authority’s explanation .. found in the non-monetary chartbook.
Good Cause for Voluntarily Leaving—In all states, individuals who leave their work voluntarily must have good cause if they are not to be disqualified.
In many states, good cause is explicitly restricted to good cause connected with the work, attributable to the employer, or involving fault on the part of the employer. However, in a state where good cause is not explicitly linked to the work, the state may interpret its law to include good personal cause or it may limit it to good cause related to work. Since a state law limiting good cause to the work is more restrictive, it may contain specific exceptions that are not necessary in states recognizing good personal cause. (For example, an explicit provision not disqualifying an individual who quits to accompany a spouse to a new job might not be necessary in a state that recognizes good personal cause; it would be necessary in a state restricting good cause to that related to the work.)