My husband was laid off from his job due to downsizing in April of 2005. He had been with the company for a little over 4.5 years. We recently received a notification in the mail that the company had taken back all of their matched contributions to his 401K. Is this legal?

When the 401 K contract was written and he was employed, he would or shoud have received a copy of the contract. This would have included notification of how long it was before he would be vested. One company I worked with the vesting was 5 years, another it was 10 years. My current company had vesting after one year. What that means you have to work the number of years required to be vested to get the employor portion of the 401K. So if he is discharged or leaves employment prior to the vesting peroid he does not get to receive the employor portoin that was paid in.

Please refer to your 401 K agreement as to if it had a vesting time frame and what it is if it does.