To think they won’t fire him?

[Curlykimbo]

My partner gave up his job and is currently on notice. He has a contract and is due to start his new job next Wednesday. However, he has had a heart attack 3 days ago and is currently hospitalised. He’s not going to be able to start at that date and we are so upset at what has happened and the implications on his health. Terrified, unable to articulate how I’m feeling, feeling sad and frightened at what has happened and we have children. Unfortunately we don’t have any savings and he is very stressed out and concentrating on the fact that he can’t work rather than getting better. My wages will just pay our bills and leave nothing for anything else. I don’t think we will be entitled to any benefits. Any advice please? Feeling very scared and upset. The hospital have advised he will need 4 weeks rest.

Contact food banks for help, or advice, or cab, prob benefits help.
At least statutory sick after a week, I think.

Keep communicating with the new employer and you can ask your DH to ask them if it’s OK for you to update them every couple of days if it’s too much for him. It’ll help build goodwill if he does that, without putting extra strain on him. When
He feels well enough to start, he should ask for a phased start, maybe mornings only for 2-3 weeks, building up to 2 full days a week, until he’s OK to do full time. No doubt it’ll be shit but you’ll get through it. Can you pick up any over time? Do you have anything like NetFlix/Spotify you can temporarily cancel?

It will depend on what type of job he does. My DH had a heart attack 2 years ago and needed a triple heart bypass, so couldn’t work for a while, but recovered quite quickly.

I wish him well, it’s very stressful and hopefully his new employers will be understanding. He may be entitled to sick pay from his current employer.

If you have a mortgage, you could ring them and ask for a payment break and any other utilities, council tax.

Can he ask his old job to allow his to retract his notice?

Do you have any kind of critical illness cover? We have this in with our life insurance provider, so it's easy to forget about in a panic. Aside from that, asking for payment breaks/reductions on anything you can will help - most places are pretty sympathetic if you actually call them before you miss a payment, so you might be able to set up payment plans for some bills to have a couple of months break now and then pay back in installments once he's recovered.

Firstly, he should be able to claim sick pay while he works his notice with current employer. If he has any benefits like enhanced sick pay or healthcare then these should still apply during his notice period.

Unfortunately once his notice period ends I would not expect the old employer to keep paying. The new one will have to pay statutory sick pay and any contracted benefits.

Keep the new employer updated with the situation. If he's got a signed contract then they can't just decide not to hire him, they'd have to go through a legal process to dismiss him. It would be foolish of them to do this immediately and would be a sign that they're not a good employer anyway.

The important thing is to get him to focus on getting better. If the new employer is an arse and doesn't want him anymore, that's not the end of the world. The important thing is he gets well again. Worst case scenario would be that he has to get disability benefit while he can't work - to apply for this it's important you keep documents showing that he didn't just quit his job but had an offer of a new one.