Family Temporary Disability Insurance

Family Temporary Disability Insurance (FTDI) is an insurance program also known as California Paid Family Leave.

This law was ratified in the year 2002 and expands unemployment disability recompense to cover persons who take time off work to care for a gravely ill family member or bond with a new minor child.

The Family Temporary Disability Insurance benefits come to about fifty-five percent of earnings and have a limit per week.

The benefits of the Family Temporary Disability Insurance program began on July 1, 2004. This program is administered by the State Disability Insurance program of the Employment Development Department.

The program is funded by employee contributions participating in the Voluntary Disability Insurance Plan (VDI) or the State Disability Insurance Plan (SDI).

The decree states that the Family Temporary Disability Insurance or Paid Family Leave must be taken at the same time as the leave under the federal Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA) and the California Family Rights Act, both of which give twelve weeks of unpaid leave in a year.

This new law does not form any new leave rights, or create new job protection, or does not necessitate an employer to grant time off or return-to-job rights.

The Family Temporary Disability Insurance program provisions are:

• The program allows six weeks of paid leave in a twelve-month period;
• It covers employees, who take a leave to bond with their own child or their domestic partner’s child, or a child placed for adoption or foster-care with them or their domestic partner;
• The program covers employees who take a leave to care for a seriously ill parent, spouse, child, or domestic partner.

The employer may oblige the employee to take up two weeks earned but unused vacation before the employee’s first receipt of the Family Temporary Disability Insurance benefits. The eligibility ends one year from the minor child’s date of birth, foster care replacement, or adoption.

Claims of benefits for 2005 showed a range of weekly benefits from $50 to $840. To be eligible for the minimum weekly amount of $50, a person must have at least $300 base period wages, and for the maximum weekly benefit of $840, a person must earn during the base period at least $19,830.92 in a calendar quarter.

The base period wraps twelve months and is separated into four quarters of three months each. Wages that are paid about five to seventeen months before the claim begins are incorporated in the base period.

The Family Temporary Disability Insurance program excludes mothers-in-law and fathers-in-law as care recipients.

An employee may not receive the Family Temporary Disability insurance benefits if they are also eligible for or already being paid State Disability Insurance, Worker’s Compensation, or Unemployment Compensation Insurance.

An employer is not obliged to grant time off or to hold a job for an employee except if the employer is covered by the California Family Rights Act or the Family and Medical Leave Act.

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