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Massachusetts Paid Family and Medical Leave

Overview

Massachusetts Paid Family and Medical Leave (MA-PFML) provides eligible employees with up to 26 weeks of paid, job-protected leave per benefit year for qualifying family, medical, or military absence reasons.

For detailed legislative requirements, see our Legislative Guidance.

Policy Status Decisions

This policy is administered by the state unless the employer has an approved plan to administer on their own.

💡 Best Practice: Follow the state's decision so the policy status matches the state's determination for benefits.

How to Use

Throughout this guidance, look for these labels to quickly identify what actions may be needed:

✅ Automatic: System handles this automatically, no action needed.

📝 Configuration Note: How the policy is set up in the platform.

💡 Best Practice: AbsenceSoft recommendation for optimal management.

❌ Manual Action or Tracking Required: User must complete this action or track elsewhere.

How AbsenceSoft Manages the Law

AbsenceSoft manages this law through 1 policy.

  • Policy Name - Massachusetts Paid Family and Medical Leave Act

  • Policy Code - MA-PFML

  • Benefit Type - Job Protection, Paid Leave

Administration Options

MA-PFML can be administered through:

  • State Plan (default) - Administered through the Massachusetts Department of Family and Medical Leave.

  • Private Plans (fully or self-insured) - Requires custom policies.

💡 Best Practice: Employers with a private plan should customize the existing policy to meet their state approved requirements and change the policy type to Company to show the policy is owned by the employer.

Employer Coverage Requirements

Refer to Legislative guidance for details.

Excluded Employers

❌ Manual Action or Tracking Required: Excluded employers are not covered under the law and may need to disable the policy in the platform to keep it from rendering. Discuss decisions with legal counsel for best approach.

Employee Eligibility

Refer to Legislative guidance for details.

MA-PFML is a state paid leave program that may have eligibility criteria tied to wages/earnings that are not available in the platform. Employers should follow the state's determination for the wage replacement policy.

💡 Best Practice: Follow the state's decision so the policy status matches the state's determination for eligibility.

❌ Manual Action or Tracking Required: Overrides in eligibility may be required if the state determines the employee has not met the eligibility requirements necessary for paid benefits.

Excluded Employees

❌ Manual Action or Tracking Required: Manually override eligibility for excluded employees from pass to fail who have not opted into the program.

Leave Entitlements and Duration

Entitlement Overview

MA-PFML entitlement is divided into three separate entitlement banks by absence-reason category, within a 52-week Sunday Forward period, capped at a combined maximum of 26 weeks across all reasons.

  • Family (Bonding, Adoption/Foster Care, Family Health Condition, Qualifying Exigency)

    • Entitlement - Up to 12 weeks in a 52-week Sunday Forward benefit year

      • does not share entitlement with the Medical or Military

  • Medical (Employee Health Condition, Pregnancy/Maternity)

    • Entitlement - Up to 20 weeks in a 52-week Sunday Forward benefit year

      • does not share entitlement with the Family or Military banks

  • Military (Care of Injured Servicemember)

    • Entitlement - Up to 26 weeks in a 52-week Sunday Forward benefit year

      • does not share entitlement with the Family or Medical banks

  • Combined maximum - Up to 26 work weeks in a 12-month Sunday Forward period across all absence reasons

Entitlement Rules

✅ Automatic: AbsenceSoft automatically tracks each entitlement bank and the combined 26-week maximum across all absence reasons.

📝 Configuration Note: The Family, Medical, and Military entitlement banks do not share entitlement with one another. This configuration applies only to cases created on or after the March 2026 release; see Managing In-Flight Cases below.

Pregnancy and Bonding Cases

Pregnancy/Maternity (Medical bank) and Bonding (Family bank) do not share the same entitlement pool under this policy.

❌ Manual Action or Tracking Required: If Bonding is requested in connection with a Pregnancy/Maternity case, submit Bonding as a separate case so entitlement is calculated properly. Opening a new case may trigger additional communication workflows; employers will need to decide whether to suppress or send these communications to their employees.

📝 Configuration Note: Policies that require a separation of cases will have a to-do item appear to instruct that a new case should be opened.

❌ Manual Action or Tracking Required: When the Bonding case immediately follows the Pregnancy/Maternity case, eligibility may need to be overridden to match the eligibility status as of the start of the Pregnancy case.

How Leave Can Be Taken

Refer to Legislative guidance for details.

Intermittent Leave Requirements

❌ Manual Action Required: Users are required to track manually/defer to the state’s confirmation whether the employee has accumulated 8 hours of leave within a 30-day period, since wage replacement is only payable once that threshold is met for intermittent leave.

Pay and Benefits

Refer to Legislative guidance for details.

Benefit Coordination

❌ Manual Action Required: No PTO agreements are available in the platform. Employers wishing to enforce a coordination agreement with PTO or other employer-paid time off will need to track that agreement outside of the platform or update any relevant communications/paperwork offerings.

📝 Configuration Note: AbsenceSoft's policy is not configured to exclude work-related disabilities, as this exclusion is not always automatic and instead situational. Configuring an exclusion on this policy would prevent proper handling of these cases until the workers' compensation claim is resolved.

❌ Manual Action or Tracking Required: Case managers should review any workers' compensation or unemployment situations individually and determine how to proceed based on the state's recommendation, as MA-PFML benefits may be reduced when an employee is also receiving those benefits.

Elimination Period

📝 Configuration Note: Elimination periods have not been configured due to the state's nuanced approach noted in the Legislative Guidance.

❌ Manual Action or Tracking Required: Elimination periods can be in described in the notes of the platform based on the state's determination and may require updates to the communications to describe the waiting period application.

Interaction with other Policies

Refer to Legislative guidance for details.

📝 Configuration Note: Massachusetts Parental Leave (MA-MATERN). Parental Leave runs concurrently with Massachusetts Paid Family and Medical Leave. Because Paid Leave requires that pregnancy and bonding be managed as separate cases, Parental Leave will be applied to both cases independently.

This can result in the appearance of overentitlement under Parental Leave , since each case receives its own 8-week allocation.

❌ Manual Action or Tracking Required: See Massachusetts Parental Leave Platform Guidance for further details on managing this policy in conjunction with MA-PFML.

Required Paperwork/Communication

Refer to Legislative guidance for details.

📝 Configuration Note: AbsenceSoft provides core paperwork for MA-PFML through the MA Notice of Benefits Available Under Paid Family and Medical Leave (MAPFMLPOSTER) paperwork/attachment. Paperwork is configured to be sent as part of the Employee Eligibility packet. Employers with private plans may have different requirements causing the need for a custom paperwork attachment be created with employer specific details.

MA-PFML certification forms are not available in the platform and are made available to the employee through the Massachusetts Department of Family and Medical Leave program’s online portal.

❌ Manual Action or Tracking Required: Updates to existing paperwork items can occur. When updates happen, they are automatically applied to paperwork unless the client has customized. Clients with customizations on the relevant paperwork will need to review to determine how to adopt the new paperwork and apply any new customizations to the updated paperwork manually.


Managing In-Flight Cases

Cases Open Before March 2026

📝 Configuration Note: The updated configuration applies only to new cases created on or after the March 2026 release (3/18/2026).

✅ Automatic: Cases opened before 3/18/2026 continue to operate under the previous configuration (26 weeks shared across all absence reasons).

❌ Manual Action or Tracking Required: Continue following previous guidance for in-flight cases: monitor individual case entitlement based on the state's absence-reason limits, and manually deny for exhaustion when individual absence-reason limits are reached, even if the 26-week combined maximum has not been exhausted.

Cases Created March 2026 or Later

✅ Automatic: All new cases created on or after 3/18/2026 automatically use the updated configuration with separate Family, Medical, and Military entitlement banks.

💡 Best Practice: Leave Managers should apply decisions in AbsenceSoft based on the state's determination.

❌ Manual Action or Tracking Required: If prior usage causes misalignment with the state's decision on cases created on or after 3/18/2026, manual denials or exhaustion overrides may be required to align with the state's decision.

Payroll Calculations

This policy uses a Base Wage Calculation Method developed from information published by the state of Massachusetts. It aims to closely replicate the calculations performed by the Massachusetts Department of Unemployment Assistance (DUA).

Pay History

Uses the 4 most-recent quarterly totals of pay history prior to the Leave Start Date.

📝 Configuration Note: Gross quarterly totals include all wages reported to the Massachusetts Department of Unemployment Assistance (DUA), including base wages, overtime, bonuses, and commissions. Annual bonuses are included in the gross total for the quarter in which they were paid. Massachusetts uses the two highest of four quarters; a bonus-heavy quarter may be selected.

Policy Configuration

A State Average Weekly Wage (SAWW) is configured in the policy's Benefit Settings; the state max is calculated as SAWW × 0.64.

📝 Configuration Note: The MA-PFML SAWW is $1,922.48, with a calculated weekly maximum of $1,230.39, effective 01/01/2026.

Massachusetts Base Wage Calculation Method Logic

  1. Retrieve Pay History:

    1. Retrieve the last four full quarters of pay history prior to the Leave Start Date.

  2. Calculate the employee's Average Weekly Wage (AWW):

    1. Identify the two quarters with the highest total earnings among the four.

    2. Sum the two highest quarters and divide by 26 to determine the AWW.

  3. Calculate the Base Weekly Wage:

    1. Retrieve the State Average Weekly Wage (SAWW) from Benefit Settings within the Policy Configuration. The state max is calculated as SAWW × 0.64.

    2. For the portion of AWW up to 50% of SAWW, apply the state benefit percent (80%): (SAWW × 0.50) × 0.80.

    3. For the portion of AWW above 50% of SAWW, apply the state benefit percent (50%): (AWW – (SAWW × 0.50)) × 0.50.

    4. Add the two values together to determine the estimated weekly benefit.

    5. If the calculated benefit exceeds the state max, cap the result at the state max.

    6. Return this as the Base Weekly Wage.

📝 Configuration Note: The value returned is an AbsenceSoft estimate based on the state's published formula. This estimate should be used for planning purposes only and confirmed against the official state determination before being treated as final.

Need Help?

For questions about policy configuration or case management, contact your AbsenceSoft support team or consult the Legislative Guidance for compliance details.