A recent case brought before the Defense Office of Hearings Appeals (DOHA) represents how just because you had a nearly thirty-year stint supporting national security and maintaining a security clearance – doesn’t mean you’ll be able to keep it if you have a lapse in employment and find yourself acting foolishly during that timeframe.
True or False: If you can verify your financial issues were caused by a layoff, you should be able to keep your clearance.
The applicant was a 64-year old aerospace engineer who worked for the government contractor from 1988 until 2017, when he accepted a voluntary layoff with severance. In 2019, the applicant underwent a property settlement agreement with his spouse, who had lived apart from the applicant since 2015. The applicant liquidated funds from his investment plan with his employer, and failed to pay the required amount to his spouse. That resulted in his spouse requesting – and being awarded – a $42,500 judgment against the applicant.
Fast forward slightly to January 2021, where the applicant accepted a job with the same company who had laid him off in 2017 (the infamous employment boomerang). In applying for a security clearance again, the applicant faced a Statement of Reasons and intent to deny his clearance eligibility.
Circumstances around debt are at the heart of making clearance determinations related to delinquencies and financial issues. The DOHA judge noted, ” Had Applicant remained continuously employed, happily married, or both, it is highly unlikely that the financial problem would have occurred. But it did. And so the question is whether Applicant has taken sufficient action to resolve the unpaid judgment owed to his spouse.”
Despite the judgment, the applicant took no proactive steps to resolve the debt in any fashion. The court noted the applicant lacked enthusiasm around paying the debt at all, and that “perhaps that’s understandable given the origin of the debt.”
But even if you hate your spouse and don’t want to pay the judgment they’ve been awarded – in this case, the person you’re thumbing your nose at isn’t your spouse at all, but is the legal system. If the applicant lacked the financial ability to pay the debt, all he would have had to do was set up a payment plan to repay the amount owed over time. At the time of application, the only money paid for the judgment was through the garnishment of the applicant’s wages – a passive process that resulted in the applicant still facing significant debt and not an effort to address it.
False: The circumstances of the debt matter, but they’re not enough to maintain clearance eligibiltiy.
Fortune favors the proactive. You may hate your spouse, your life, and your layoff – but if you fail to create a proactive plan to address financial issues that result even from issues that were outside of your control, you can kiss your clearance eligibility goodbye.
