@valpal1123 You should definitely ask your employer. Imagine they will want to structure it to minimize the amount they have to pay, but they wouldn’t necessarily be opposed to giving you more time if it doesn’t cost them.
One question is what “fully paid” state leave entails if you are a high earner. In my state at least we get “67% pay”, but that also has a dollar amount cap on it, so it’s really less than half of my actual salary since I make a lot more than average. Your job may be willing to “top up” to make your income equal to normal though. My job’s policy (New York State also has paid family leave) for reference:
First 2 weeks require using banked sick/vacation time due to disability waiting period rules. Not sure what they would do if someone didn’t have any banked time left though, but we get a good amount of PTO.
Do not tap into any state or private insurance benefits at this point.
Weeks 3-6 - New York State disability and private disability insurance combine to pay 60% of salary. My job covers the remainder to give us full salary.
Weeks 7-10 - New York State family leave pays 67% of the lower of the state weekly wage or our personal weekly wage. My job pays the remainder to give us full salary.
Weeks 11-18 - New York State family leave pays 67% of the lower of the state weekly wage or our personal weekly wage. My job does not pay anything.
I think if you have a C-section the disability stretches to weeks 3-8, then push everything else forward as well (weeks 9-12 and weeks 12-20 for last parts).
So I get 18-20 weeks, but with only the first 10-12 fully paid and the last 8 being around $1131 a week.
