Yes. Under the Family and Medical Leave Act, an eligible employee can take up to 12 workweeks of unpaid, job-protected leave in a 12-month period to care for a parent with a serious health condition.{1Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 29 U.S. Code 2612 – Leave Requirement} FMLA leave to care for a parent covers biological, adoptive, step, and foster parents, plus anyone who raised you in a parental role, but it does not cover parents-in-law.{2eCFR. 29 CFR 825.201 – Leave To Care for a Parent} Your employer must hold your job and keep your group health insurance active while you’re out. The leave itself is unpaid unless you substitute accrued paid time off.
Who Qualifies
Three conditions have to line up before FMLA applies to you:
- Your employer is a private company with 50 or more employees, a public agency, or a public or private school.
- You have worked for that employer for at least 12 months and put in at least 1,250 hours during the 12 months before your leave starts.
- Your employer has at least 50 employees within 75 miles of your worksite.
That last one catches people. A company can have thousands of employees nationwide, but if your particular location has fewer than 50 coworkers within a 75-mile radius, you’re not covered. The 12 months of employment don’t have to be consecutive, though gaps longer than seven years generally don’t carry over.
Who Counts as a Parent
The FMLA defines a parent as a biological, adoptive, step, or foster parent, or any person who stood in loco parentis to you when you were a child.{3U.S. Department of Labor. Family and Medical Leave Act Advisor – Definition of a Qualifying Family Member} In loco parentis just means someone who filled the role of a parent. An aunt who raised you after your parents died, a grandparent who handled your day-to-day care, or a family friend who took you in all qualify if they genuinely acted as your parent during your childhood.
To establish an in loco parentis relationship, a simple written statement asserting the relationship exists is enough. No adoption papers, no court order. Your employer can ask for reasonable documentation of the family relationship, but you get to choose the form, and a personal statement is sufficient.{4U.S. Department of Labor. Fact Sheet 28B – Using FMLA Leave When You Are in the Role of a Parent}
Parents-in-Law Are Not Covered
The FMLA explicitly excludes parents-in-law.{2eCFR. 29 CFR 825.201 – Leave To Care for a Parent} If your spouse’s mother or father has a serious health condition, you cannot use federal FMLA leave to care for them. Your spouse, however, can take their own FMLA leave to care for their parent. Some state paid family leave programs define family more broadly and may cover in-laws, so check your state’s rules if federal FMLA doesn’t fit your situation.
What Counts as a Serious Health Condition
Your parent’s condition has to qualify as a serious health condition under the law. That generally means a health problem involving either inpatient care (an overnight hospital stay) or continuing treatment by a healthcare provider. Common examples: recovery from surgery, chemotherapy, a chronic condition like diabetes or COPD that requires periodic medical visits, or a stroke or serious injury that leaves your parent unable to care for themselves.
For conditions involving continuing treatment rather than hospitalization, the illness or injury typically has to cause more than three consecutive calendar days of incapacity plus ongoing medical care. Chronic conditions that flare up periodically also qualify, even if individual episodes last fewer than three days, as long as the condition requires periodic visits to a provider. A routine checkup or a common cold won’t meet the threshold.
How Much Leave and How the Clock Works
You’re entitled to up to 12 workweeks of leave during a 12-month period.{5U.S. Department of Labor. Fact Sheet 28 – The Family and Medical Leave Act} Those 12 weeks cover all FMLA-qualifying reasons combined, so if you already used four weeks earlier in the year for your own medical issue, you have eight weeks left for your parent’s care in the same period.
Employers can define the 12-month period in one of four ways, and the choice affects how much leave you have available at any given moment:
- The calendar year, January 1 through December 31.
- Any fixed 12-month period, such as a hire-date anniversary year or a fiscal year.
- A rolling period measured forward from the first day you use FMLA leave.
- A rolling period measured backward from each date you take leave.
The rolling-backward method is the most restrictive because it prevents you from stacking leave at the end of one year and the beginning of the next. Ask HR which method your employer uses; it’s usually spelled out in the employee handbook.{6U.S. Department of Labor. Fact Sheet 28H – 12-Month Period Under the Family and Medical Leave Act}
How to Request Leave
If you know in advance your parent will need care, like a scheduled surgery, give your employer at least 30 days’ notice. When the need is unexpected, notify your employer as soon as practicable. You don’t need to mention the FMLA by name, but you do need to give enough information for your employer to recognize the leave may qualify.
Your employer will likely ask for a medical certification from your parent’s healthcare provider. The Department of Labor publishes an optional form, WH-380-F, for this purpose, and employers can use their own form as long as it doesn’t ask for more than the DOL form requires.{7U.S. Department of Labor. Certification of Health Care Provider for Family Member’s Serious Health Condition – WH-380-F} You generally have 15 calendar days to return the completed certification after it’s requested. Miss that deadline without a good reason and your employer can deny the leave.{8eCFR. 29 CFR 825.305 – Certification, General Rule}
Once you’ve given notice, your employer has to respond with an eligibility notice within five business days telling you whether you qualify and outlining your rights and responsibilities. When it has enough information, the employer must also issue a written designation notice confirming the leave is FMLA-protected. If the leave doesn’t qualify, the employer must tell you that in writing too.{9U.S. Department of Labor. Fact Sheet 28D – Employer Notification Requirements Under the Family and Medical Leave Act}
Taking Leave in Smaller Blocks
You don’t have to take all 12 weeks at once. Intermittent leave lets you break your time into smaller pieces — a few hours here, a day there — for things like driving your parent to dialysis or providing care during chemotherapy recovery. You can also work a reduced schedule, fewer hours per day or fewer days per week, for as long as the medical need lasts.
When you take intermittent leave, your employer tracks it in increments no larger than one hour. If the employer already tracks other leave in smaller increments, the same increment applies here. You can never be charged FMLA time for hours you actually worked.{10eCFR. 29 CFR 825.205 – Increments of FMLA Leave for Intermittent or Reduced Schedule Leave} Your employer can temporarily move you to an alternative position that better accommodates an intermittent schedule, but the new role must have equivalent pay and benefits.
Pay, Health Insurance, and PTO
FMLA leave is unpaid, but your employer must keep your group health insurance active on the same terms as if you were still working.{11eCFR. 29 CFR 825.209 – Maintenance of Employee Benefits} If you normally pay part of the premium through payroll deduction, you still owe your share. Arrange a payment method with HR before your leave starts, because missing premium payments can cost you your coverage.
If you don’t come back to work after your leave ends, your employer may recover the premiums it paid on your behalf. That recovery is not allowed if the reason you didn’t return was a continuing serious health condition (yours or your parent’s) or another circumstance beyond your control.{12eCFR. 29 CFR 825.213 – Employer Recovery of Benefit Costs}
You can choose to substitute accrued paid leave — vacation, sick time, personal days — for unpaid FMLA leave, and your employer can also require you to use paid leave concurrently.{13eCFR. 29 CFR 825.207 – Substitution of Paid Leave} Either way, the paid leave runs alongside your FMLA entitlement; it doesn’t add to your 12 weeks. You get a paycheck during part of the leave, but you burn through your PTO bank in the process.
About a dozen states and the District of Columbia have mandatory paid family leave programs that may provide partial wage replacement while you care for a parent. Benefits and eligibility rules vary. If your state has one, you may collect those benefits during time that also counts against your federal FMLA entitlement.
Getting Your Job Back
When your leave ends, you’re entitled to return to the same job or an equivalent one with the same pay, benefits, and working conditions.{14eCFR. 29 CFR 825.214 – Employee Right to Reinstatement} Equivalent means genuinely comparable, not a demotion dressed up with matching salary. Your employer can’t eliminate your position just because you went out, and you’re still entitled to reinstatement even if someone covered your role while you were gone.
There is one narrow exception. If you’re a salaried employee among the highest-paid 10 percent of all employees within 75 miles of your worksite, your employer can classify you as a key employee and deny reinstatement, but only if restoring you would cause substantial and grievous economic injury to its operations. That’s a high bar. The employer must notify you of key-employee status in writing when you request leave, explain the consequences, and give you a chance to return early if reinstatement will be denied.{15U.S. Department of Labor. Family and Medical Leave Act Advisor – Key Employees} You still keep your health insurance during leave even if this exception applies.
Protection From Retaliation
Your employer cannot punish you for taking or requesting FMLA leave. Firing, demoting, disciplining, or otherwise discriminating against you for using the law is prohibited. Counting FMLA absences under a “no-fault” attendance policy is also illegal; those days simply don’t count against you.{16eCFR. 29 CFR 825.220 – Protection for Employees Who Request Leave or Otherwise Assert FMLA Rights}
Retaliation can be subtle. Discouraging you from filing FMLA paperwork, cutting your hours after you return, passing you over for a promotion because of your leave, or writing a negative performance review based on your absence all violate the law.{17U.S. Department of Labor. Fact Sheet 77B – Protection for Individuals Under the FMLA} If something feels off after you come back, document it. The paper trail matters if you later need to file a complaint.
If Your Rights Are Violated
If your employer denies valid FMLA leave, retaliates against you, or fails to reinstate you to an equivalent position, you can file a complaint with the Department of Labor’s Wage and Hour Division at 1-866-487-9243. Complaints are handled confidentially, and the WHD will direct you to your nearest office.{18U.S. Department of Labor. How to File a Complaint} You also have the right to file a private lawsuit, though many employment attorneys recommend starting with the DOL process or consulting a lawyer who handles FMLA cases before going to court. The federal statute of limitations for FMLA claims is generally two years from the violation, or three years if the violation was willful.