Stay at Home Moms
Maternity Leave/Insurance after quitting your job
Hello, I am currently due in April and my husband and I are leaning towards me quitting work to stay home. While I plan to give my work notice that I will not be returning, I was wondering how that will effect my benefits coverage. I can switch to my husbands benefits after the birth of the baby, and his benefits will cover all 3 of us, however, I would like to keep mine through the delivery. Should I wait until after the birth before resigning? No flames please! I just want to explore all of my options and I'm not sure what the best way to go about this would be... Thanks!
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Re: Maternity Leave/Insurance after quitting your job
It might depend on when in the month of April you are due. My benefits from my job lasted through the end of the month that I worked my last day in. Check to see what your employer does.
But if you are due toward the end of April, consider COBRA or something else as a possibilty to extend it - just in case. You don't want to plan on ending your coverage at the end of April and end up with a May baby. Some Drs will work with insurance issues and induce before the end of the month (if you are full term) but some won't.
Talk to your HR. Since you are being upfront about being done, they won't have an issue telling you exactly what will and won't be covered.
are you covered under STD?-
for me i was covered with my insurance during my STD- 6 weeks after birth. During that time we switched to DH's policy and dropped my work coverage.
I was in your position when I was PG. I was carrying the insurance at the time.
Here is what I did. I said nothing. I acted like I was going to go back to work.
I was covered under my insurance even when I was on leave and getting paid. When I went on unpaid leave I could have opted to purchase low-cost COBRA for employees who are on disability. I decided to tell them then that I wasn't coming back. So I never paid the COBRA. But that is where you can run into problems- if you pay the COBRA and the company is still paying your premium on your behalf with the assumption you are going back then you don't. They may ask you to pay back the premiums they paid on your behalf.
Here is a tip that my boss gave me- give notice early in the month. As long as you have insurance coverage on the first of the month- you are covered for that entire month.
This is what we did and we had no problems. Good Luck
I forgot to add- at the time we weren't on DH's insurance- just mine.
When I quit my job it was considered a "change of life" event so we could pick his insurance up and didn't have to wait until open enrollment at his company
Births are a 'life change' event- your DH can add both of you after the birth. no need to worry about open enrollments.
Thanks... My due date is April 2nd, so it would be the begining of the month, or if I go early, it would be March, and I definitely plan to work right up until my due date.
I want to do right by my company, and give them the notice that they need, however, I dont want to strap us financially have to owe money for maternity leave and benefits. I will be fine with giving them notice as soon as I deliver that I'm not coming back, but I"m so afraid of them coming back and saying that they will not cover the delivery and we would have to pay out of pocket.
I do have short term disability, for those that asked, but I believe I have to use all of my sick time before STD will go into effect.
Thank you for the correction.
When we did this 9 years ago, they wouldn't let my husband add me unless it was open enrollment so maybe they didn't know what they were talking about or it was different back then.
you sound just like I did 2 years ago. I was worried about the same thing and there was really no need for all that worry.
Do you work for a big corporation? I did, so I think they were used to girls not coming back. No one was upset or asked for money back. And I got as much mat leave and NJ STD as I could- then quit. I was even worried the state of NJ would come after me for the money but they never did
This is exactly it! As if we aren't worried enough about living on one income, now we have to worry about the possible costs of owing money to our former company. Ahh the stress
Thanks everyone for your help. I guess the best thing for me to do, is just sit down with an HR Rep, tell them that I have not yet decided what I"m going to do, and that I just want to weigh my options for each different scenario.
I do work for a big corporation, and my insurance is much better than DH's and covers nearly all of the birthing costs, which is why I'm pressed on staying on my insurance as long as possible.
Well, I wouldn't quit your job before the baby comes. You really never know what will happen.
I worked for a mid-sized firm at the time, that hadn't seen a pregnancy in 17 YEARS before mine. Talk about working in a total "man's" world. I knew that I wanted to stay at home, but wasn't sure that it would really be for me. I made my final decision after DD#1 was born - I knew I wanted to stay at home and not go back to work.
I was worried that my company would make me pay back as well, but they were really understanding. I mean, this type of thing had never happened in the company before......
I totally agree with this.