Intermittant Bonding

Rockie

Have any of you ever run into a case of where an employee who has a child does not take the entire 12 weeks off for pregnancy/bonding? (I know, it rarely happens). We require (by policy) that the employee take this entire 12 weeks if they request it, at one time.

Have you ever had someone who takes say, 8 weeks for the birth/bonding and because of finances,comes back "early" and then requests to take the "balance" later?

A colleague asked me about this as she has a case where an employee feels she did not "use" all of her "maternity/bonding" leave and has requested to take the rest of it off later in the year. From what I have read, if your policy states this must all be taken at once, then you are covered. Of course, you have the balance of your yearly FMLA "bank" to use for other FMLA qualifying events.

I have never had this request, but I am sure it will come up sooner or later.

LindaS

In Wisconsin, the portion of FMLA that allows intermittent leave for the birth or adoption of a child states that any intermittent leave must be taken within 16 weeks of the birth or adoption. After the 16 weeks, federal kicks in and an employee cannot use intermittent leave without the employer's consent. The way we handle this situation (and it has happened) is that the employee is informed, in writing, what the law allows as well as what our policy is which is that after the sixteen weeks, intermittent leave is NOT allowed. If an employee only uses six weeks initially and then returns to work and the sixteen weeks expire, they ONLY way that they can use the remaining 6 weeks is to take it as one single block of time. Although the employee receives STD during the initial leave (female employees, of course), it is not the equivalent to their weekly wage and adding an additional 6 weeks of unpaid leave is not something most employees can financially handle. Male employees are not provided any paid leave during their FMLA leave so they cannot financially handle that either. Once and employee is informed of this, they typically choose not to take the time.