How to File for FMLA: Steps, Notice, and Certification

To file for FMLA leave, confirm you meet the eligibility rules, give your employer proper notice of the qualifying reason, return any medical certification within 15 calendar days, and wait for the employer’s written designation of your leave. The Family and Medical Leave Act gives eligible employees up to 12 workweeks of unpaid, job-protected leave in a 12-month period for specific health and family reasons.¹ The steps below walk through the filing process in the order you’ll actually do them.

Step 1: Confirm You and Your Employer Are Covered

FMLA doesn’t apply to every job. Private employers are covered if they employ 50 or more people for at least 20 calendar workweeks in the current or prior year. Public agencies and public or private elementary and secondary schools are covered regardless of size.²

You personally qualify if you meet three tests:³

You have worked for your employer for at least 12 months. Those months don’t have to be consecutive, so past service after a break can still count.
You have logged at least 1,250 hours of service during the 12 months right before your leave begins.
Your employer has at least 50 employees within 75 miles of your worksite.

The 50-employee-within-75-miles count is measured when you give notice. If your employer meets it at that moment, a later drop in headcount doesn’t cancel your eligibility for that leave.³

Step 2: Confirm Your Reason Qualifies

FMLA covers specific situations, not general time off. You can take up to 12 workweeks in a 12-month period for any of the following:¹

Bonding with a newborn, a newly adopted child, or a child placed with you for foster care. This leave must be used within the first 12 months after birth or placement.
Caring for your spouse, child, or parent with a serious health condition.
Your own serious health condition that keeps you from performing your job.
A qualifying exigency arising from a spouse’s, child’s, or parent’s covered active duty or call to active duty in the Armed Forces.

A separate category, military caregiver leave, allows up to 26 workweeks in a single 12-month period to care for a covered servicemember with a serious injury or illness. You qualify if you are the servicemember’s spouse, child, parent, or next of kin.⁴

What Counts as a Serious Health Condition

Not every illness qualifies. A serious health condition generally involves either inpatient care (an overnight hospital stay) or continuing treatment by a healthcare provider. One common path to continuing-treatment status requires more than three consecutive full calendar days of incapacity, plus either two in-person treatments within 30 days of the first day of incapacity or one treatment leading to an ongoing care regimen. The first in-person visit must occur within seven days of when the incapacity began.⁵

Chronic conditions such as asthma, diabetes, or epilepsy also qualify if they require periodic treatment and occasionally cause episodes of incapacity, even when individual episodes last fewer than three days.

When You Aren’t the Biological Parent

You don’t need a biological or legal tie to a child to use bonding or child-care leave. If you have day-to-day responsibility for caring for or financially supporting a child, you may qualify as standing in the role of a parent. The presence of biological parents in the home doesn’t disqualify you. Factors include the child’s age, the child’s dependence on you, financial support you provide, and the parental duties you perform.⁶

Step 3: Give Your Employer Notice

When your need for leave is foreseeable, such as a planned surgery, expected due date, or scheduled adoption placement, give at least 30 days of advance notice.⁷ If 30 days isn’t possible because circumstances changed, notify your employer as soon as practicable. For a qualifying exigency tied to a family member’s military service, notice must also be as soon as practicable, no matter how far ahead you know. When leave is completely unforeseeable, such as a sudden hospitalization, notify your employer as fast as you can, usually within one or two business days.

You don’t have to say the word “FMLA.” You just have to give enough information for the employer to figure out that the absence may qualify. Telling your manager you need time off for a scheduled surgery or to care for a parent after a stroke is enough to put the employer on notice. If you’re already approved for intermittent leave, reference the existing leave or the qualifying reason when calling in each absence.

Put your request in writing when you can, even if your workplace also allows verbal notice. A dated email or a written form creates a record of exactly when you gave notice and what you said.

Step 4: Return the Medical Certification on Time

Your employer can require medical certification to verify a serious health condition. The Department of Labor publishes optional forms: Form WH-380-E for your own condition and Form WH-380-F when you’re caring for a family member. Employers can use their own forms but cannot ask for more information than the regulations allow.

The employer should request certification when you give notice or within five business days after. You then have 15 calendar days to return the completed form, unless circumstances beyond your control make that impractical despite a good-faith effort.⁸ Missing that deadline without a valid reason can delay or defeat your leave. Treat 15 days as firm, book the provider appointment right away, and follow up in writing if the office is slow.

Your healthcare provider fills in the medical details, including the nature of the condition and the expected duration of incapacity. The form does not require a specific diagnosis; the provider can describe the condition in general terms and still give the employer what it needs to approve the leave.

Step 5: Watch for the Employer’s Two Notices

Once your employer learns your leave may be FMLA-qualifying, it has its own deadlines. Within five business days, the employer must give you a Notice of Eligibility and Rights and Responsibilities (optional Form WH-381). This tells you whether you meet the eligibility rules. If you don’t, the notice must state at least one specific reason, such as insufficient tenure, too few hours worked, or worksite size.⁹

After you return the medical certification or other required documentation, the employer has another five business days to issue a Designation Notice (optional Form WH-382). This is the document that officially designates your time as FMLA leave and spells out specifics such as whether you’ll be required to use accrued paid leave at the same time.⁹

Keep copies of everything you send and everything you receive. If a dispute comes up later about what was filed and when, your own records are the best evidence you’ll have.

Choosing Continuous or Intermittent Leave

You can take FMLA in one continuous block or break it into smaller increments. Intermittent leave lets you use time in separate periods: a few hours for physical therapy, a day for chemotherapy, a week during a flare-up. A reduced-schedule arrangement, where you temporarily work fewer hours a day or fewer days a week, is another option. Say which you’re requesting when you first file.

Intermittent or reduced-schedule leave for planned medical treatment should be scheduled to minimize disruption to your employer’s operations when possible. For bonding leave after a birth or placement, intermittent scheduling is available only if your employer agrees.

Pay and Health Insurance While You’re Out

FMLA leave is unpaid by default, but you can choose to use accrued paid vacation, sick, or personal leave at the same time. Your employer can also require you to use it concurrently. Either way, the paid leave runs alongside the FMLA clock and doesn’t extend the 12 weeks.¹⁰ If neither of you elects to substitute paid leave, your paid time stays banked for later use.

Some states run their own paid family and medical leave programs that provide partial wage replacement during qualifying absences. Depending on the state’s rules, those benefits may run at the same time as your FMLA leave. Check with your state labor department for what’s available where you work.

Your employer must maintain your group health insurance on the same terms as if you were still actively working throughout the leave.¹¹ If you normally pay part of the premium, you still owe that share while on leave. The employer must give at least 15 days’ written notice before dropping coverage for a late premium, and coverage cannot lapse until at least 30 days after a missed payment. If coverage does lapse for nonpayment, the employer must fully restore it when you return, with no new waiting periods or pre-existing condition exclusions.¹²

If you don’t return to work after leave ends, your employer may recover the premiums it paid on your behalf during the leave. It cannot recover those costs if the reason you didn’t return is a continuation or recurrence of a serious health condition, yours or a family member’s, or another circumstance beyond your control.¹³

Your Job When You Come Back

When your leave ends, you have the right to return to the same job or one equivalent in pay, benefits, and working conditions.¹¹ Your employer cannot eliminate your position solely because you took FMLA leave, and you don’t lose benefits you had accrued before leave started. You also don’t accrue additional seniority or benefits during the unpaid leave itself.

A narrow exception applies to salaried employees in the highest-paid 10 percent within 75 miles of the worksite. If restoring one of these “key employees” would cause substantial and grievous economic injury to the company, the employer can deny reinstatement, but only after giving specific written notices at the required times.¹⁴

If Your Employer Denies the Request or Retaliates

Federal law makes it illegal for your employer to interfere with your FMLA rights or to punish you for using them. Employers cannot deny or discourage FMLA leave, fire you for requesting it, or discriminate against you for asserting rights under the law.¹⁵ Prohibited conduct also includes counting FMLA absences against you under a no-fault attendance policy, using leave as a negative factor in promotion or hiring decisions, shuffling employees between worksites to knock a location below the 50-employee threshold, or changing your duties so you don’t need leave.¹⁶

If you believe your rights were violated, you have two main options. You can file a complaint with the Department of Labor’s Wage and Hour Division by calling 1-866-487-9243 or contacting a local office through dol.gov/agencies/whd. Complaints are confidential.¹⁷ You can also file a private lawsuit. Available remedies include lost wages and benefits, interest, liquidated damages equal to lost wages plus interest, equitable relief such as reinstatement or promotion, and attorney’s fees and costs.¹⁸ You generally must sue within two years of the last violation, or within three years if the violation was willful.¹⁹

1
Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 29 U.S. Code 2612 – Leave Requirement
2
Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 29 U.S.C. 2611 – Definitions
3
eCFR. 29 CFR 825.110 – Eligible Employee
4
eCFR. 29 CFR 825.112 – Qualifying Reasons for Leave, General Rule
5
U.S. Department of Labor. Family and Medical Leave Act Advisor – Serious Health Condition
6
U.S. Department of Labor. Fact Sheet 28B – Using FMLA Leave When You Are in the Role of a Parent to a Child
7
eCFR. 29 CFR 825.302 – Employee Notice Requirements for Foreseeable FMLA Leave
8
eCFR. 29 CFR 825.305 – Certification, General Rule
9
eCFR. 29 CFR 825.300 – Employer Notice Requirements
10
eCFR. 29 CFR 825.207 – Substitution of Paid Leave
11
Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 29 U.S. Code 2614 – Employment and Benefits Protection
12
eCFR. 29 CFR 825.212 – Employee Failure to Pay Health Plan Premium Payments
13
eCFR. 29 CFR 825.213 – Employer Recovery of Benefit Costs
14
eCFR. 29 CFR 825.219 – Rights of a Key Employee
15
Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 29 U.S. Code 2615 – Prohibited Acts
16
eCFR. 29 CFR 825.220 – Protection for Employees Who Request Leave or Otherwise Assert FMLA Rights
17
U.S. Department of Labor. How to File a Complaint
18
Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 29 U.S. Code 2617 – Enforcement
19
U.S. Department of Labor. Family and Medical Leave Act Advisor – Enforcement of the FMLA