Fathers Sue for More Parental Leave

Father’s Day has just past and once this holiday has ended, many fathers return to business as usual at home and on the job.

We once wrote about that “Fathers Are Reluctant to Take Paternity Leave” and while that may still be the case for some, things are changing. The Washington Post recently reported on “How a dad’s lawsuit against JP Morgan Chase could lead to more parental leave elsewhere” and while this is the first such case in recent years, it is a very high-profile one. JP Morgan Chase will end up paying $5 million for a class action lawsuit in which fathers said they did not get the same kind of parental leave that mothers did.

While those employees wanted the same leave that mothers got, “…many [employers] don’t offer any to new fathers — a survey by the Society for Human Resource Management found that just 29 percent of organizations offer some kind of paid leave to dads.”

And some employers have taken a tiered approach, offering different leave based on whether or not an employee was considered a primary or secondary caregiver in order to accommodate all kinds of families including same-sex couples and those who adopt. This too became problematic as those primary and secondary designations were not as neutral in practice as they seemed in theory.

In the future, employers may offer gender-neutral parental leave policies that do not even use primary and secondary designations. But one expert warned that offering equal parental leave to all employees may lead employers to split the different between what a mother would traditionally get and what a father would get by cutting down on caregiving leave for all.

For this reason, financial planning will ensure that you have your finances in order so that you have a savings cushion in place for when you need caregiving leave.

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