Intermittent FMLA leave lets you take your 12 weeks of job-protected leave in smaller pieces — hours here, a day there, a week when a flare-up hits — instead of one continuous stretch. It draws from the same annual entitlement as continuous leave, but the mechanics around notice, certification, and tracking are more involved, which is where most disputes between employees and employers happen.
Who Can Take Intermittent Leave
You have to clear two eligibility tests. First, you must have worked for your employer for at least 12 months (not necessarily consecutive) and logged at least 1,250 hours in the 12 months right before your leave starts.1U.S. Department of Labor. FMLA Frequently Asked Questions
Second, your employer has to be covered. The FMLA reaches all public agencies (federal, state, and local) and private employers with 50 or more employees within a 75-mile radius of your worksite.1U.S. Department of Labor. FMLA Frequently Asked Questions If you work for a smaller private company, the federal law doesn’t cover you, though your state may have its own leave law that does.
What Conditions Qualify
Most intermittent leave is taken for a serious health condition, either your own or one affecting a spouse, child, or parent you need to care for.2U.S. Department of Labor. Fact Sheet 28F – Reasons that Workers May Take Leave under the Family and Medical Leave Act A serious health condition generally involves inpatient care or continuing treatment by a healthcare provider, and it causes a period where you can’t work or handle normal daily activities.
Continuing treatment is what most intermittent-leave situations fall under. It covers chronic conditions that flare up periodically, like severe migraines or Crohn’s disease, and conditions that require ongoing appointments such as chemotherapy, dialysis, or physical therapy. If your condition makes you unable to work from time to time and requires periodic visits to a provider, it likely qualifies.2U.S. Department of Labor. Fact Sheet 28F – Reasons that Workers May Take Leave under the Family and Medical Leave Act
One important boundary: leave for the birth, adoption, or foster placement of a child can be taken intermittently only if your employer agrees. Without that agreement, bonding leave must be a continuous block.3U.S. Department of Labor. Fact Sheet 28Q – Taking Leave from Work for the Birth, Placement, and Bonding with a Child under the FMLA Intermittent leave to care for a child with a serious health condition is different — the employer can’t refuse it.
Medical Certification for Intermittent Use
Your employer can require medical certification supporting the request. For your own condition, the standard form is DOL Form WH-380-E, which HR should provide. You have 15 calendar days to get it completed by your healthcare provider and returned.4U.S. Department of Labor. Fact Sheet 28G – Medical Certification under the Family and Medical Leave Act
For intermittent leave, the certification has to go further than just confirming a serious health condition. Your provider must explain why leave needs to be taken in non-continuous increments and estimate the frequency and duration of episodes. Something like “two four-hour treatments per month” for planned care, or “unpredictable flare-ups of one to two days, several times a month” for a chronic condition. That estimate gives the employer a framework for planning around your absences and, later, a reference point for whether your actual usage lines up.
If the paperwork you turn in is incomplete or unclear, the employer has to tell you in writing exactly what’s missing and give you at least seven calendar days to fix it.4U.S. Department of Labor. Fact Sheet 28G – Medical Certification under the Family and Medical Leave Act Miss that cure window and your request can be denied, so treat it as a hard deadline.
If your employer doubts the certification, it can require a second opinion from a provider it chooses and pays for, and if that opinion conflicts with your original, a third opinion jointly chosen and paid for by the employer, which becomes binding.5eCFR. 29 CFR 825.307 – Authentication and Clarification of Medical Certification
The Approval Timeline
Two notices come from your employer, and they’re separate. Within five business days of your request, the employer must send an eligibility notice telling you whether you meet the FMLA’s requirements.6eCFR. 29 CFR 825.300 – Employer Notice Requirements That’s the “yes, you’re covered” or “no, you’re not” step.
Actual approval comes later, in a designation notice, issued within five business days of the employer having enough information to decide. In practice that usually means five business days after your completed certification comes in.4U.S. Department of Labor. Fact Sheet 28G – Medical Certification under the Family and Medical Leave Act The designation confirms your absences will count against your 12-week entitlement.
Calling In Each Absence
Approval doesn’t mean you can just miss work without contacting anyone. Every absence still has to be reported, and this is where most people get into trouble.
For foreseeable absences, like a scheduled treatment, give as much advance notice as you reasonably can and follow your company’s normal scheduling procedures. For unforeseeable absences, like a sudden flare-up, notify your employer as soon as practicable and follow the usual call-in procedures. If the company requires you to call a specific number or a specific person, use it.7eCFR. 29 CFR 825.303 – Employee Notice Requirements for Unforeseeable FMLA Leave
Genuine emergencies are the exception. If you need emergency medical treatment, you’re not expected to call in until you’re stable enough to actually make a call.7eCFR. 29 CFR 825.303 – Employee Notice Requirements for Unforeseeable FMLA Leave Outside of true emergencies, skipping the normal call-in process can give the employer grounds to deny FMLA protection for that specific absence, even if the underlying condition is fully certified.
How Hours Come Out of Your 12 Weeks
Your employer tracks intermittent leave and deducts it from your 12-week annual entitlement. Leave comes off in the smallest increment the employer’s payroll system uses for other absences, down to a minimum that can’t exceed one hour.8eCFR. 29 CFR 825.205 – Increments of FMLA Leave for Intermittent or Reduced Schedule Leave Two hours off for an appointment means two hours off your bank. For someone on a standard 40-hour week, 12 weeks works out to 480 hours. A different weekly schedule produces a different total, calculated from your actual hours.
Recertification
The employer can’t demand fresh paperwork every time you call in sick, but it can ask you to recertify periodically. The default rule is no more often than every 30 days, and only in connection with an actual absence.9eCFR. 29 CFR 825.308 – Recertifications
If your original certification stated your condition would last longer than 30 days, the employer typically has to wait until that minimum duration runs out before asking again. For long-term or lifetime conditions, recertification is still available every six months in connection with an absence.9eCFR. 29 CFR 825.308 – Recertifications
Three situations let the employer ask sooner: you request an extension, the frequency or severity you described has changed significantly, or the employer receives information that casts doubt on the reason you gave for an absence.9eCFR. 29 CFR 825.308 – Recertifications
Pay During Intermittent Leave
FMLA leave itself is unpaid. Your employer can require you to use accrued paid time off — sick days, vacation — concurrently with FMLA, and you can also choose to do so.1U.S. Department of Labor. FMLA Frequently Asked Questions Running them together means a paycheck during the absence, but the hours still come off both banks at once. It doesn’t add time to your 12-week entitlement.
About a quarter of states and the District of Columbia run their own paid family and medical leave insurance programs, funded through payroll contributions, which provide partial wage replacement. Maximum benefits and duration vary a lot by state, and these programs sit alongside the federal FMLA rather than replacing it. If your state has one, check whether your condition qualifies under both so you can layer income during your absences.
Health Insurance While You’re Out
Your employer must maintain your group health coverage during FMLA leave on the same terms as if you were still at work. The employer keeps paying its share of the premium; you keep paying yours.10eCFR. 29 CFR 825.209 – Maintenance of Employee Benefits If the company changes plans or benefits while you’re on leave, you get the updated coverage like anyone else.
If you fall behind on your premium share, the employer can eventually drop coverage, but only after sending written notice at least 15 days before the coverage would end, specifying the exact date it will lapse if payment isn’t received.11U.S. Department of Labor. Employee Failure to Pay – Health Plan Premium Payments Coverage can’t be terminated until your payment is more than 30 days overdue.
Returning to Your Job
When you come back from intermittent leave — whether that means resuming full attendance or simply finishing an approved absence — you’re entitled to return to the same position or one virtually identical in pay, benefits, duties, and working conditions, at the same or a nearby worksite.12eCFR. 29 CFR 825.215 – Equivalent Position
Unconditional pay increases that happened while you were out, like cost-of-living adjustments, still apply to you. Benefits resume at the same levels as when leave began, and you can’t be forced to requalify for something you already had, like retaking a physical exam for life insurance. Unpaid FMLA time doesn’t count as a break in service for pension or retirement plan vesting or eligibility.12eCFR. 29 CFR 825.215 – Equivalent Position These protections apply whether you took your 12 weeks in one continuous block or in dozens of two-hour pieces.
One thing that can happen mid-leave: if your intermittent leave is foreseeable and based on planned treatment, the employer can temporarily transfer you to a different position that better accommodates the recurring absences, provided the alternative offers equivalent pay and benefits.13eCFR. 29 CFR 825.204 – Transfer of an Employee to an Alternative Position During Intermittent Leave or Reduced Schedule Leave The transfer can’t be used as a penalty. Moving a day-shift office worker to a graveyard shift, reassigning a professional to manual labor, or relocating you significantly farther from home aren’t allowed. Once you no longer need intermittent leave, the employer has to put you back in your original position or an equivalent one.