re: Maternity leave question

I am not really sure what the company's exact policy is, she took 12 weeks last time and we did not have to pay anything out of pocket. She is taking 12 this time and we are being told we have to pay.

This company is a complete shite show, she gets paid well, but shite like this with hr department always happens. Not paying over time, not properly applying pto time, always some sort of frick up.

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My wife is a speech therapist, the hr department at her work, which is a complete shite show, just sent her an email and asked her how she was going to pay for her benefits while she was out. This seems like bullshite to me, they should pay for that correct? She is not an independent contractor. Also, for her last pregnancy, this was never brought up. I am thinking this hr person has no clue what they are doing.

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She is either taking Short-Term Disability or unpaid leave on top of her Paid Time Off. When you do that then she owes for her benefits during that time period.

This is extremely common in at least Louisiana.

Is it’s possible last time she paid with vacation or pto time? That’s what we for our last one. Whatever we owed she just got paid for vacation hours that equates to that and they kept it all as the deduction.

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She must not have 12 weeks of Paid Time Off accrued this time.

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This. OP you are a little clueless here too.

The last time she likely had 12 weeks of PTO or another form of time to pay her benefits.

Here’s what you do Op, if she has say 6 weeks of PTO but is taking 12 weeks off then you take 1 week of PtO, then one week unpaid, one week of PtO, one week unpaid...

That way she gets enough of a paycheck to cover her portion of the benefits package. As opposed to taking 6 weeks of PTO then 6 weeks unpaid.

My question was if Aflac pays her directly while she’s on leave (vs it coming from her company). If so, that’s probably why she has to make arrangements to pay her premiums. If Aflac is paying her directly, the employer can’t deduct it from her payment.

If she had PTO last time, they would’ve deducted premiums from that.

I don’t have short term disability, so I don’t know exactly how it pays out.

Yeah, she needs to talk to her employer. It’s a super common policy (paying premiums while on leave, one way or another).

Congrats, btw!

My wife and I went through the same thing. A few weeks before she went on bed rest they (HR) informed her that we would have to cover her insurance payments while she was on leave. HR did tell her that while she was still working she could take out double the amount that comes out of her check to cover some of the payments while she was out. Of course it only covered about 4 weeks after she used all of her PTO etc. Had they told us this sooner we probably could have had all 12 weeks covered. The rest we paid out of pocket from her short term disability. It sucked.

I anticipate the same thing here, only odd thing is last time, we didn't pay anything. She did not have 12 weeks of pto time built up, probably not even 2 weeks, and we didn't have to pay a dime. No idea, but I am sure it will not work in our favor.