My husband's mother is sick with cancer and for that reason we will need to go to Brazil and spend three weeks there. He communicated this to his employer and asked for unpaid leave to care for his mother. The company said they won't be able to accommodated his request and will need to let him go. However, they did not promptly fire him, they asked him to write a resignation letter. He asked for clarification as to why he'd need to write the letter, since his intent is not to resign and he
only wanted a leave of absence. The company responded that he will be in an unauthorized leave, and he needs to formally resign since he knows he won't be able to work for three weeks, or they will proceed with job abandonment.
Does anyone know if this is really a thing? Can the company consider it job abandonment, even if he communicated before that his intent was to leave for three weeks and come back to work? Also, aren't they legally obligated to grant him an unpaid leave of absence?