At present he hasn’t been fired and if his date of vesting wasn’t approaching, OPs question may not even have arisen in his mind. Since terminating him is a qu

At present he hasn’t been fired and if his date of vesting wasn’t approaching, OPs question may not even have arisen in his mind. Since terminating him is a question related directly to his vesting, everyone is going to know he was let go right before vesting to eek out the best possible value from him right before he gets something he’s worked a year to receive. “Yeah but our contract says” is literally the worst thing you can do with a small company if you want morale to be high.