Paternity and partner leave in the United States

Start with the plain fact

There is no federal paid parental leave in the United States for private-sector workers. No national scheme pays a partner to take time off when a baby is born. What federal law provides is unpaid, job-protected leave for people who meet three eligibility tests, plus a separate paid entitlement that applies only to federal government employees. Everything else is state law or your employer's own policy.

That is not a gap in this page. It is the entitlement.

The Family and Medical Leave Act

The FMLA provides up to 12 workweeks of leave in a 12-month period for, among other reasons, the birth of a child and to bond with a newborn. The leave is unpaid and job-protected: your group health insurance continues on the same terms, and you return to the same or an equivalent job.

You are eligible only if all three of the following are true:

• You have worked for a covered employer for at least 12 months.
• You have at least 1,250 hours of service with that employer during the 12 months before the leave starts.
• You work at a location where the employer has at least 50 employees within 75 miles.

Each of those knocks out a different group. The 12-month test excludes recent hires. The 1,250-hour test excludes most part-time workers — it works out at roughly 24 hours a week across the year. The 50-employees-within-75-miles test excludes people at small employers and at isolated worksites of larger ones. Failing any one of the three means the FMLA does not apply to you at all.

FMLA leave may be unpaid or taken at the same time as employer-provided paid leave. Employers can and often do require you to use accrued vacation or paid time off concurrently, so the 12 weeks is a ceiling on job protection rather than an addition to whatever paid leave you already have.

Federal employees

Federal employees covered by the FMLA provisions in title 5 have a separate and materially better entitlement. Under the Federal Employee Paid Leave Act, Public Law 116-92, codified at 5 U.S.C. 6382, an employee with a qualifying birth or placement is entitled to up to 12 administrative workweeks of Paid Parental Leave for each qualifying event, provided they maintain a parental role. It applies to births and placements occurring on or after 1 October 2020.

Paid Parental Leave is substituted for unpaid FMLA leave rather than added to it, so the FMLA rules on how the 12 weeks may be used still govern. It can be taken intermittently or on a reduced schedule only if the agency agrees; that is not an entitlement.

State paid family leave

A minority of states run their own paid family leave insurance programs, generally funded by payroll contributions and administered by a state agency rather than by employers. Benefits, duration, eligibility and the claim process differ in every one of them, and none of them is federal.

California's Paid Family Leave, run by the Employment Development Department, is the oldest and gives a sense of the shape: benefit payments for up to 8 weeks in a 12-month period, with a minimum weekly benefit of $50 and a maximum of $1,765 a week under the rates published by EDD for 2026. Washington and New Jersey run comparable programs with different durations and different wage-replacement formulas.

Two practical points. First, state paid leave and FMLA are separate: paid leave programs replace income, FMLA protects your job, and you may need both. Second, state programs usually have their own service and earnings tests, so qualifying for one says nothing about qualifying for the other. Check your own state's agency, because a figure from California tells you nothing about your entitlement in Texas.

What to do before the birth

Because so much depends on your specific employer and state, the useful work happens months ahead of the due date.

• Confirm in writing whether your worksite meets the 50 within 75 miles test. Human resources can answer this and it is the fastest way to know whether FMLA applies to you.
• Count your hours. If you are near the 1,250-hour line, extra hours before the leave date can decide eligibility.
• Ask whether your employer requires paid time off to run concurrently with FMLA, and get the answer in writing.
• Check whether your state runs a paid family leave program and what its own earnings and waiting-period rules are.
• Ask whether your employer offers paid parental leave of its own. Many do, and it is frequently more generous than anything the law requires.

Give notice properly

You do not have to use the words "FMLA leave", but you do have to give your employer enough information to know the leave may be covered, and you must give notice as soon as possible and practical. A due date is foreseeable, so tell them as soon as you have one. Put it in writing even if a conversation has already happened and keep a copy.

Employers may ask for information from a health care provider before approving the leave, and must allow you 15 calendar days to supply it, with more time where the provider cannot complete the certification in that window.

Bonding leave has a deadline

FMLA leave for the birth of a child and to care for the newborn must be taken within one year of the birth, and the same one-year rule applies to a placement for adoption or foster care. Unused weeks do not roll forward. Partners planning to take leave after the birthing parent returns to work should count that window carefully, particularly if they are splitting leave into blocks.

Splitting is itself conditional. An eligible employee may not take intermittent leave for the birth or placement of a child unless the employer agrees. That is different from intermittent leave for a serious health condition, which is available when medically necessary without the employer's consent. Get any agreement to a phased return or a four-day week in writing before the birth.

Where to get help

The Department of Labor's Wage and Hour Division is the governing authority for the FMLA and publishes the fact sheet that sets out the eligibility tests. The Office of Personnel Management is the authority for federal employees' Paid Parental Leave. For anything paid in the private sector, the authority is your own state's paid leave agency, and after that your employer's written policy — in that order, because state law overrides a policy that offers less.