FMLA - birth of child -leave requirements

bhamilton

I have a situation here where we have an exempt person who wants to take two weeks of his FMLA leave when his child is born (no problem) but he wants to take the other 10 weeks when his wife's FMLA expires and she returns to work so that he can be with his child for the other 10 weeks. Can he do this?

LindaS

Under the federal guidelines, it is up to the employer to allow an employee to utilize intermittent leave specifically for the birth of a child, which I would interpret this to be, so this decision is up to you. The only catch would be if there were state guidelines that differ from the feds. Here in WI, the state FMLA allows intermittent leave for the birth of the child to be used intermittenly only within 16 weeks of the birth (they can use up to 6 weeks) so we have no choice. I would examine the state regs. as well as your past practice in this situation to make a determination.

Margaret Morford

If your state regulations don't require it, make it your policy not to permit intermittent leave for the birth of a child. If you permit intermittent leave for this, you're eventually going to have the parent who decides to take every Friday off for the next year to "bond with the child."

Margaret Morford
theHRedge
615-371-8200
[email]mmorford@mleesmith.com[/email]
[url]http://www.thehredge.net[/url]

crawfod

Unless this employee has a lot of vacation time or your firm has a unique benefit, does he realize this 10 weeks would be unpaid? Also, in some organizations, while health insurance is usually guaranteed, STD/LTD and Life Insurance, etc. benefits often terminate during a leave without pay. It might be wise to let him know all the consequences of this leave. I guess this rarely happens because not many employees can afford such a long leave without pay, but I agree with the others: with your approval, intermittent leave is permissible.

njjel

As an option to allowing NO intermittent leave for birth of a child you could consider carving out your policy to set up guidlines for that type of leave. This would be more employee friendly than permitting none at all. However, either way is permissible.