Maternity Leave in California

Mrs. High Heels — Mon, 19 Nov 2012 19:30:41 +0000

In a nation that does little to offset the burden of new parenthood, at the very least, I’m glad I live in the state of California. I finally called my HR department to figure out how to file a claim for maternity leave, and if I choose, I can get a total of six months off. The key to getting this much time off is short-term disability insurance. Short-term disability allows you to get 55-60% of your pay while on leave. There is one big caveat, if your salary is greater than $65k, you will hit the cap payout by the state and won’t get more than that. Since I opted to buy into supplemental insurance on top of STD, I’ll be getting 80% of my pay throughout most of my leave. Another benefit to getting supplemental insurance is that there is no cap.

My company website doesn’t talk about these California laws at all. I asked my co-workers what they did for maternity leave and also have friends who work in Human Resources, so they were able to give me insight into these laws. If I had just gone with my company’s maternity leave “benefits”, I would’ve just gotten the standard 12-weeks UNPAID, job-protected leave through FMLA.

Anyway, the laws are extremely confusing because some of them run concurrently. I finally figured out what I had to do after discussing this with not one, not two, but three HR representatives. I was hearing different things, so I needed it to be crystal clear. Does getting time off for maternity leave really need to be this complicated?

In California, there are 4 laws you should look into when planning maternity leave:

Continue Reading: Maternity Leave in California

Hellobee » Maternity Leave in California

Maternity Leave in California