Human Resources
Office of Faculty & Staff Benefits
Office of Faculty & Staff Benefits

Qualifying Events

If you have a qualifying event (i.e. a qualifying change in your employment or family status)  you may change certain benefit elections during the year.  In order to do so, you must provide documentation of the change in your employment or family status to the Office of Faculty and Staff Benefits and make your elections in GMS within 30 days of the event.

Additionally, the change you make must be consistent with the change in your circumstances. For example, if your spouse gets a new job and enrolls both of you in dental insurance, you will be able to drop your dental coverage from Georgetown, but could not drop your medical insurance as a result of this event; having a child would allow you to enroll that child in existing coverage and add or make changes to your flexible spending account elections.

To help you better understand acceptable changes, here’s a Qualifying Event Matrix that outlines status changes that will allow you to make a change, and explains the types of changes you can make to your insuance elections as a result of those changes.

To make relevant changes to your benefits when experiencing a qualifying event, please log on to the Georgetown Management System (GMS) with your NetID and password and click on the Benefits icon. From there, you can enroll in or make changes to your benefits plans that will be affected by the qualifying event. As part of your online enrollment, please attach a digital copy of your supporting documentation on the final step of your benefit change process in GMS.

Please note that Georgetown University does not grant any other exceptions whatsoever to the rule regarding making changes to your plan choices mid-year. Changes must be consistent and submitted within 30 days.

Examples of Qualifying Events include:

For more complete listing, view the Qualifying Event Matrix  . If you believe you have experienced a qualifying event not listed here, or have further questions, please contact our office at benefitshelp@georgetown.edu.