Take the drama out of Parental Leave
- Claire Baker
- May 25
- 2 min read
"Is this because I said I wasn't pregnant?" He scratched his beard.
A new dad had just been denied the disability insurance payments he was counting on to get through his leave. I was on the call to figure out what to do next.
The company had a generous short-term disability policy so they could afford to offer 12 weeks of paid leave. The plan was supposed to combine with Washington's state parental leave to offer 90% of regular income.
He was the first non-birth parent to use the policy. And it wasn’t working as planned.
And yes, his claim was denied because he wasn't pregnant.
Delivering bad news no one saw coming is one of the worst parts of my job. "Yeah. Since you didn't actually have the baby, you haven't had a medical event. No medical event, no doctor's note. No doctor's note, no disability," I said. "At least, that's how the insurance company sees it."
"So how am I going to get paid for the next 3 months?"
"Washington pays about $1500 per week," I said. "...before taxes."
He was an engineer. And he could do math.
"That's less than half of my salary. I have a mortgage. And a new baby. Isn't the company going to pay the rest? The policy says..."
He was right. The Handbook said parents would get 90% pay for up to 12 weeks. There was time to tweak things for the next baby, but for now, the company was probably on the hook.
Parental leave plans are one of the messiest policies I touch.
It requires calibrating layers of public programs, private insurance, and unknown future circumstances.
No one can predict all of the surprises (good and bad) that a new baby can bring. Vendors may help with administering all those variables, but policy design is up to the company. Calibrating all the variables can feel like writing a horoscope.
You have to test the edge cases by imagining everything that could possibly go wrong. It can be fun. Like writing a soap opera.
I collect dramatic edge cases from my own experience, questions on Slack groups, and industry war stories. They may sound like TV plot lines, but many of them have happened to someone. The rest are just a matter of time.
I've developed the most likely scenarios into a 20-question parental leave stress test. My “Claire-voyance” has saved companies from a five-figure surprise more than once.
Have you ever had to fix a leave plan on the fly? Drop your horror stories in the comments. Someone else might need a heads-up.
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