What Can I Use FMLA For? Medical, Family, and Military Leave

The Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA) gives eligible employees up to 12 workweeks of unpaid, job-protected leave in a 12-month period for five categories of reasons: your own serious health condition, the birth or placement of a child, caring for a spouse, child, or parent with a serious health condition, certain needs arising from a family member’s military deployment, and caring for an injured service member. That last category — military caregiver leave — extends the entitlement to 26 workweeks. So the short answer to what you can use FMLA for is: serious illness (yours or a close family member’s), a new child in the family, and specific military-family situations.

Your Own Serious Health Condition

You can take FMLA leave when a serious health condition makes you unable to perform the essential functions of your job.¹ A serious health condition means an illness, injury, or physical or mental condition that involves either inpatient care or continuing treatment by a health care provider.²

Inpatient care means an overnight stay in a hospital, hospice, or residential medical facility. Continuing treatment reaches several situations beyond that:³

A period of incapacity of more than three consecutive full calendar days, combined with at least two in-person visits to a health care provider within 30 days (the first within seven days), or one visit that starts a regimen of continuing treatment such as prescription medication.
Any period of incapacity related to pregnancy or prenatal care, with no minimum number of days required. Morning sickness and bed rest for complications are covered.
Chronic conditions such as asthma, diabetes, or epilepsy that require at least two provider visits per year, continue over an extended period, and may cause episodic incapacity.
Permanent or long-term conditions like Alzheimer’s disease or a terminal illness, so long as you remain under a provider’s supervision, even without active treatment.

Routine physical, eye, and dental exams do not count as treatment for FMLA purposes. A regimen limited to over-the-counter medication, bed rest, or exercise you can begin without seeing a provider does not qualify on its own either.⁴

Bonding With a New Child

FMLA covers leave for the birth of your child and for bonding with a newborn, as well as for the placement of a child with you for adoption or foster care.¹ Both parents are entitled. Bonding leave is time-limited: your right to take it expires 12 months after the birth or placement.⁵

If you and your spouse work for the same employer, you share a combined total of 12 workweeks for bonding leave and for leave to care for a parent with a serious health condition. Each of you keeps a separate entitlement for your own serious health condition.⁶

Bonding leave cannot be taken intermittently unless your employer agrees. Leave you need before or after a birth for your own medical recovery can qualify separately as leave for your own serious health condition, which does allow intermittent use when medically necessary.⁷

Caring for a Family Member With a Serious Health Condition

You can use FMLA leave to care for a spouse, child, or parent with a serious health condition, using the same definition of “serious health condition” described above.¹ The covered relationships are defined more broadly than they might seem:²

Child: a biological, adopted, or foster child, stepchild, legal ward, or a child you raise in a parental role (in loco parentis). For family-care leave, the child must be under 18, or, if older, unable to care for themselves because of a mental or physical disability.
Parent: your biological parent or anyone who raised you in a parental role when you were a minor. Stepparents who filled that role qualify.
Spouse: your husband or wife under a legally recognized marriage, judged by the law of the place where the marriage was performed.

FMLA does not cover leave to care for siblings, grandparents, in-laws, or adult children who are not incapable of self-care, even if you are the person providing their care.

Qualifying Exigency Leave for a Military Deployment

You can take up to 12 workweeks of leave when your spouse, child, or parent is on covered active duty in the Armed Forces, or has been notified of an impending call to active duty, and that deployment creates a qualifying need.¹ Qualifying exigencies include:⁸

Addressing issues that arise when a service member gets seven or fewer days’ notice of deployment.
Attending official ceremonies, family support programs, or informational briefings tied to the deployment.
Arranging alternative childcare, enrolling a child in a new school, or attending school meetings made necessary by the deployment.
Handling powers of attorney, transferring bank accounts, and making other financial or legal preparations.
Spending time with a service member on short-term rest leave during deployment, up to 15 calendar days per instance.
Attending counseling sessions related to the deployment for yourself, the service member, or the service member’s child.
Attending post-deployment arrival ceremonies or handling matters arising from a service member’s death.

Qualifying exigency leave can be taken intermittently or on a reduced schedule without your employer’s agreement.⁷

Military Caregiver Leave

If you are the spouse, child, parent, or next of kin of a covered service member or veteran with a serious injury or illness incurred or aggravated in the line of duty, you can take up to 26 workweeks of leave in a single 12-month period.⁹ The 26-week cap includes any other FMLA leave you take during that same 12-month window. Use 4 weeks for your own health condition, and 22 weeks of caregiver leave remain.

For veterans, the service member must have been discharged under conditions other than dishonorable within the five years before you first take military caregiver leave for that person.¹⁰ Military caregiver leave is available once per service member, per serious injury or illness. If the same veteran later develops a different qualifying injury or illness, a new 26-week entitlement becomes available in a separate 12-month period.

Who Actually Qualifies for FMLA

Even if your reason fits one of the five categories, FMLA protection depends on two additional tests. Your employer must be a covered employer, and you must be an eligible employee.

A private-sector employer is covered when it employs 50 or more employees for at least 20 calendar workweeks in the current or preceding calendar year.¹¹ Public agencies and public or private elementary and secondary schools are covered regardless of size.

To be eligible individually, you must satisfy three conditions:¹²

At least 12 months of employment with the employer. The months need not be consecutive, though a break of seven years or more generally resets the clock.
At least 1,250 hours actually worked in the 12 months immediately before your leave begins. Paid time off and holidays typically do not count. That averages about 24 hours per week.
A worksite with at least 50 employees of the same employer within 75 miles, measured when you give notice of the need for leave. Eligibility is locked in at that point even if the headcount later drops.

Veterans returning from covered service under USERRA can count the hours they would have worked during military absence toward the 1,250-hour requirement.¹²

Is FMLA Leave Paid

FMLA leave itself is unpaid. You can choose to use accrued paid leave (vacation, sick time, or personal days) at the same time as FMLA leave, and your employer can require you to do so.¹³ When paid leave runs concurrently, you receive your paycheck while FMLA job protections continue.

Your employer must keep your group health insurance in place during FMLA leave on the same terms as if you were still working. You remain responsible for your share of the premium, and if your leave is unpaid, your employer must give you advance written notice explaining how and when to pay it.¹⁴

Around 14 states and jurisdictions operate their own paid family and medical leave insurance programs that provide partial wage replacement during qualifying leave, with benefit durations ranging from roughly 6 to 20 weeks. Where these programs exist, the paid benefits generally run at the same time as your federal FMLA leave.

1
Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 29 USC 2612 – Leave Requirement
2
Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 29 USC 2611 – Definitions
3
eCFR. 29 CFR 825.115 – Continuing Treatment
4
eCFR. 29 CFR 825.113 – Serious Health Condition
5
Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 29 USC 2612 – Leave Requirement – Section: Expiration of Entitlement
6
U.S. Department of Labor. Fact Sheet 28L – Leave When You and Your Spouse Work for the Same Employer
7
Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 29 USC 2612 – Leave Requirement – Section: Leave Taken Intermittently
8
eCFR. 29 CFR 825.126 – Leave Because of a Qualifying Exigency
9
Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 29 USC 2612 – Leave Requirement – Section: Servicemember Family Leave
10
U.S. Department of Labor. Fact Sheet 28M(b) – Military Caregiver Leave for a Veteran Under the FMLA
11
eCFR. 29 CFR 825.104 – Covered Employer
12
eCFR. 29 CFR 825.110 – Eligible Employee
13
eCFR. 29 CFR 825.207 – Substitution of Paid Leave
14
eCFR. 29 CFR 825.210 – Employee Payment of Group Health Benefit Premiums