Received a Dismissal – What Matters in the First Three Days

The dismissal letter has landed in your letterbox – so what now? What you should do (and avoid) in the first three days, before any deadline even starts to run.

The letter has arrived, the conversation was brief. Now you’re sitting at the kitchen table with the dismissal in front of you. At a moment like this, most clients think first about deadlines. Yet in the first three days something else matters: will you still have all your options open by the time you reach me?

In short

The first three days after a dismissal are not about calculating deadlines. They are about acting: documenting when the letter reached you, securing your paperwork, signing nothing, and registering as seeking work in good time. These four steps cost you nothing. But they secure the evidence and the entitlements that will later decide questions of severance, an unfair dismissal claim, and unemployment benefit. The actual three-week deadline for bringing a claim comes only afterwards – more on that below.

How I can help you

• Reviewing and assessing the dismissal within the first few days: is it formally valid, timely, and socially justified?
• Reconstructing, together with you, when the letter reached you and what the evidence looks like, before memories fade
• Checking whether – and which – documents you should still obtain while you still have access
• Clarifying whether an unfair dismissal claim makes sense – and bringing it in good time if it does
• Assessing whether an employer’s offer of a termination agreement is acceptable for you or risks a benefit suspension

Establish and document when the dismissal reached you

It is not the date on the dismissal letter that counts. What counts is the day it actually reached you – with a letter through the post, that means the moment it landed in your letterbox, not the moment you opened it. This date of receipt is the pivot for everything that follows. It determines when the deadline for bringing a claim begins to run. If it is ever disputed, you must be able to prove it.

So in the first few hours:

• Keep the envelope – the postmark and any delivery note are the best evidence of the date you have.
• Note the date and time it was delivered, as precisely as you can, while the memory is still fresh.
• Secure witnesses if anyone saw the letter delivered or handed to you in person – a name and contact details are enough to begin with.
• If the dismissal was handed to you personally or on the premises, record who was present and what was said.

This documentation takes you ten minutes. Without it, a clear-cut matter turns into a question of evidence if things are disputed. If the employer relies on an earlier date of receipt, it is regularly the employee who loses that argument.

Secure your paperwork while you still have access

A dismissal often also ends your access to company systems – your email inbox, personnel file, internal storage. What you don’t secure now, you can later often only recover through a laborious request for disclosure. Make copies where you still can, without touching anyone else’s login details or trade secrets:

• Your employment contract and all supplementary agreements (addenda, special arrangements, commission agreements)
• Written warnings – even seemingly unimportant ones, as they can play a role in an unfair dismissal case
• References from earlier roles within the company
• Payslips from the last few months
• Relevant correspondence surrounding the dismissal, such as emails about the reasons for it or its announcement

These documents form the basis of any initial assessment I make for you. Without them, every case begins with a time-consuming round of chasing paperwork.

Sign nothing

The biggest mistake in the first few days is signing in haste. There are three things you should, as a matter of principle, not sign at this stage without first taking legal advice:

• An acknowledgement of receipt with additional clauses. “I confirm receipt” is unproblematic. But if the form contains a waiver of claims or an acknowledgement of the grounds for dismissal, you are signing away more than mere receipt.
• A termination agreement. It ends the employment relationship by mutual consent and often looks temptingly quick and quiet. The problem: anyone who ends their own employment, or actively takes part in ending it, has as a rule brought about their own unemployment. The consequence is a benefit suspension under § 159 SGB III, during which no unemployment benefit is paid.
• A settlement agreement that retrospectively accepts and regulates the dismissal already given. It, too, can trigger a benefit suspension. At the same time, it takes away your ability to have the dismissal reviewed by a court.

None of this means that an offer from your employer is inherently a bad thing. Some situations do justify an amicable solution. But that is something to be examined before you sign, not afterwards.

Register with the employment agency

Whether or not you intend to accept the dismissal or challenge it, a parallel social-law duty applies: registering as seeking work under § 38 Abs. 1 SGB III. The general rule is that you must register at the latest three months before the employment relationship ends. If less time than that lies between your learning of the end date and the actual end – for example because the dismissal was without notice or given at very short notice – that period shortens to three days after you learn of it. This duty to register applies regardless of whether you are pursuing the continuation of the employment relationship through the courts. It applies even if the employer holds out the prospect of withdrawing the dismissal. Anyone who misses the registration risks a separate benefit suspension for late registration – on top of everything the dismissal itself raises.

And the deadline to bring a claim?

The unfair dismissal claim itself must be brought before the labour court within three weeks of receipt of the written dismissal, under § 4 KSchG. Otherwise the dismissal is deemed valid from the outset under § 7 KSchG – no matter how open to challenge it might have been on the merits. How exactly this deadline is calculated, and what happens if it is in danger of lapsing, I explain in detail in The Three-Week Deadline for a Dismissal. The point here is a different one: the first three days do not decide the deadline itself. They decide the evidence and the documents with which you enter that deadline.

A typical case

A client receives her dismissal by courier into her letterbox on a Friday afternoon. She only opens the letter on the Monday. Straight away, though, she notes that the envelope was in the box on the Friday, and she keeps it. That same day she downloads her most recent payslips and her employment contract from the company portal, while her access is still active. A few days later the employer presents her with an acknowledgement of receipt containing the sentence “I hereby accept the grounds for dismissal”. She does not sign it, but brings the form to her initial consultation instead. The date of receipt is clearly provable through the envelope she kept. The deadline for the claim can be calculated with certainty, and the claim is brought in good time.

Common mistakes

• Leaving the dismissal letter unopened and failing to secure the postmark – so that, if disputed, there is no proof of the date of receipt.
• Signing the termination agreement that very day out of relief or a wish to “get it over with”, without knowing the benefit-suspension consequences.
• Putting off registering with the employment agency because you want to “bring a claim first” – the two run in parallel and independently of each other.
• Not securing company documents before access to your email inbox or personnel file is cut off.
• Confusing the three-week deadline with the notice period and believing you automatically have more time.

Frequently asked questions

Does the date on the dismissal count, or the day it reached me?

What is decisive is solely the day it actually reached you – with a letter through the post, when it landed in your letterbox; with personal delivery, the day it was handed over. The date printed on the letter is legally irrelevant if it differs from the day of receipt.

Do I have to sign an acknowledgement of receipt?

No, you are not obliged to. If you do sign, make sure the acknowledgement really is limited to receipt of the letter and contains no additional declarations.

What happens if I sign a termination agreement?

A termination agreement ends the employment relationship by mutual consent and rules out an unfair dismissal claim. Because you have actively taken part in ending it, the employment agency will as a rule impose a benefit suspension under § 159 SGB III, during which no unemployment benefit is paid – unless there is good cause.

Do I still have to register if I intend to challenge the dismissal?

Yes. The duty to register with the employment agency under § 38 Abs. 1 SGB III applies regardless of whether you are asserting the continuation of the employment relationship before the courts. Both routes run in parallel.

How quickly do I have to register as seeking work?

As a rule, three months before the employment relationship ends. If less time lies between your learning of the end date and the actual end, you must register within three days of learning of it.

Your next step

The first few days after a dismissal often decide more about your position in what follows than the dismissal itself does – the evidence, the documents, and the question of what you don’t sign. Bring me the dismissal and, if you already have them, the envelope and your documents to an initial consultation. I will tell you where you stand and what needs to be done now. You can also find out more about your options when facing a dismissal on my employment law topic page.

This article provides general information and is no substitute for legal advice in an individual case. Last updated: 2026-08-22.

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