My soon to be ex-husband did exactly that. Unemployed for 9 months, left me the day after I got home from hip replacement surgery, moved in with his ex-girlfriend he has admittedly been sneaking around with the entire 16 years we were married, "miraculously" got a job the week his unemployment ran out in June and then managed to get get laid off right after August 1st when he could reapply for unemployment again. He's also been working "under the table" for a friend of his. He says the Judge will look at the fact that I have a good job (24 years) and that he is on unemployment and he won't have to pay for anything in the divorce. Fortunately, my attorney says the Judge will see right through his ruse.
His girlfriend is on disability for no apparent reason and has been manipulating him royally to be a parasite on society like she is. He had been harping about going on disability for several years due to a heart bypass he had 3 years ago (that I paid for and supported him during recovery), but I told him I personally know of at least 10 men who have had that surgery and have gone on to live full productive lives. I told him to apply for a job at Home Depot in the electrical department. I bought him a computer and tried to teach him how to use it so he could maybe get a job in a parts warehouse or as an estimator, but he refused to learn. I guess he finally got tired of me trying to make him live up to his responsibilities while she was playing to his pity party.
Although there are honest people out there on unemployment and disability, I am finding more and more that they are in the minority these days.
I own several businesses, and over the years, I have had to lay of a few people, mostly from the unskilled/semi-skilled ranks. The vast majority of these people collected unemployment for nearly the entire benefit period — regardless of the strength of the economy — and just as the benefits were about to expire, they would suddenly find a job.
True story: I had an a problem employee who seemed to think that I worked for her, rather than the other way around. She was an administrative assistant, and she was pretty good at her job, when she showed up. The problem was that she would use all of her vacation, sick, and personal time in the first month of the year, and after that she would show up late, leave early, take two hour lunches, etc., and sometimes not show up at all. I had every reason to believe that she was trying to get fired, so that she could collect unemployment on the belief that I wouldn't challenge the claim or that her poor work habits didn't rise to the level of “cause” for termination, which is a real possibility in a liberal blue state.
In March, 2009 — in the middle of the great recession — she gave me one weeks notice that she was quitting her job. I made the mistake of telling her that she should leave at the end of the day because there wasn't much going on and I really don't want employees, once they give notice, to have access to customer lists, financial information, and other proprietary information. She filed for unemployment the very next day, and when I challenged the claim, the unemployment judge ruled that I had fired her without cause because I terminated her prior to the date she intended to quit. 18 months later, she is still collecting unemployment, and has even bragged to a former co-worker that she has turned down job offers because she doesn't have to work.