Overview
New York's Temporary Disability (NY-STD) provides partial wage replacement to eligible employees who are unable to work due to a non-work-related illness, injury, or pregnancy. Benefits do not include job-protected leave.
For detailed legislative requirements, see our Legislative Guidance.
Policy Status Decisions
This policy is administered by the state or an insurance carrier chosen by the employer unless the employer has an approved plan to administer on their own.
💡 Best Practice: Employers should confirm eligibility determinations and benefit payments through their carrier or state fund, where applicable. AbsenceSoft is used to track benefit payments.
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.
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Policy Name - New York Temporary Disability
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Policy Code - NY-STD
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Benefit Type - Paid Leave
Administration Options
NY-STD is carrier-administered. Covered employers must secure coverage through one of the following:
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State Fund - administered through the New York State Insurance Fund
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Private Plan - through insurance carrier licensed to write disability coverage in New York; may require custom policies
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Self-Insurance (with approval from the Workers' Compensation Board)
💡 Best Practice: Employers with a private plan should consider customizing 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.
Coverage Threshold Amounts
📝 Configuration Note: AbsenceSoft's policy does not have an employer-level coverage-threshold rule configured. The law's day-based coverage test is not evaluated within the policy itself; the policy is applied based on the employee's Work State and the employer's determination of active coverage status.
❌ Manual Action or Tracking Required: Manually override eligibility for employees where coverage thresholds may not align with information sent on the employee demographic file.
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.
This policy may have eligibility criteria tied to wages/earnings that are not available in the platform. Employers should follow the carrier's determination for the wage replacement policy.
Employers should rely on their carrier to confirm eligibility has been met.
📝 Configuration Note: Length of service criteria is not available in the platform.
💡 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.
Work State Requirements
📝 Configuration Note: Policy is configured with a work state of New York - meaning all employees with that work state will be reviewed for eligibility.
❌ Manual Action or Tracking Required: Eligibility may need to be overridden if the work state for the employee is different from the policy configured work state, based on the employer's review of the employee's work locations.
Eligibility Exceptions
Excluded Employees
❌ Manual Action or Tracking Required: Manually override eligibility from pass to fail for excluded employees.
Leave Entitlements and Duration
Refer to Legislative Guidance for details.
Entitlement Overview
All NY-STD absence reasons share a single combined entitlement of 26 work weeks in a 52-week rolling back period.
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Employee Health Condition
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Pregnancy/Maternity
✅ Automatic: AbsenceSoft automatically calculates entitlement against the 26-work-week entitlement across both absence reasons in this policy.
Entitlement Rules
📝 Configuration Note: NY-STD entitlement is configured in Work Weeks.
✅ Automatic: The Pregnancy-Maternity absence reason is configured with a Policy Event that ends the NY-STD policy period based on the Bonding Start Date entered on the case, so the disability policy closes when the bonding period begins.
❌ Manual Action or Tracking Required: Update the case's bonding start and delivery dates as needed so the policy event applies the correct entitlement period.
❌ Manual Action or Tracking Required: Track combined NY-STD and New York Paid Family Leave (NYPFL) usage to ensure the shared 26-week, 52-week rolling back maximum is not exceeded. The platform does not automatically enforce this cross-policy cap. Leave managers should apply decisions in AbsenceSoft based on the carrier's/state's determination, and manually deny or override exhaustion if combined usage approaches or reaches the cap.
Pay and Benefits
Refer to Legislative guidance for details.
Benefit Coordination
📝 Configuration Note: NY-STD 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 situations individually and determine how to proceed based on the state's recommendation.
Elimination Period
📝 Configuration Note: NY-STD is configured with a 7 calendar day exclusive elimination period.
❌ Manual Action or Tracking Required: Confirm with the state's determination whether the waiting period applies before approving benefits on a new claim.
Relapse
📝 Configuration Note: NY-STD is configured to allow relapse within a 3 month window.
❌ Manual Action or Tracking Required: Reopen existing cases as 'Relapse' for claim continuation. The state determines if the case qualifies as a relapse event.
Interaction with other Policies
Refer to Legislative guidance for details.
📝 Configuration Note: NY-STD is configured as Not Concurrent With NYPFL.
❌ Manual Action or Tracking Required: Track combined NY-STD and New York Paid Family Leave (NYPFL) usage to ensure the shared 26-week, 52-week rolling back maximum is not exceeded. The platform does not automatically enforce this cross-policy cap. Leave managers should apply decisions in AbsenceSoft based on the carrier's/state's determination, and manually deny or override exhaustion if combined usage approaches or reaches the cap.
Required Paperwork/Communication
📝 Configuration Note: AbsenceSoft provides core paperwork for NY-STD through the NY State Disability Benefits Statement of Rights (NYDB271S) paperwork/attachment. Paperwork is configured to be sent as part of the Employee Eligibility packet.
NY-STD claim forms are not available in the platform and are made available to the employee through the carrier, the Workers' Compensation Board, or the employer, outside the platform.
❌ 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.
Payroll Calculations
This policy uses a Base Wage Calculation Method developed from information published by the state of New York. It aims to closely replicate the calculations performed by the employer's chosen carrier.
Pay History
Uses the last 8 weeks of gross paychecks prior to the Leave Start Date.
📝 Configuration Note: Gross pay per paycheck should include all wages paid on the check date, including base wages, overtime, bonuses, commissions, and tips. Under NY regulations (12 NYCRR §379.1), annual or irregular bonuses must be allocated over the period beginning the month of payment rather than entered as a lump sum in a single paycheck.
Policy Configuration
A State Weekly Max is configured in the policy's Benefit Settings.
📝 Configuration Note: The NY-STD State Weekly Max is $170, unchanged since 05/01/1989.
New York Base Wage Calculation Method Logic
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Retrieve Pay History:
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Retrieve the last 8 weeks of paychecks based on check dates before the Leave Start Date.
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Calculate the employee's Average Weekly Wage (AWW):
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Sum the 8 weeks and divide by 8 to determine the Average Weekly Wage (AWW).
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Must have at least 2 paychecks in the last 8 weeks. If the required pay history is not available, the platform will return the relevant error.
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Calculate the Base Weekly Wage:
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Apply the state benefit percent (50%): AWW × 0.50.
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Retrieve the state max from Benefit Settings within the Policy Configuration.
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If the calculated benefit exceeds the state max, cap the result at the state max.
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Return this as the Base Weekly Wage.
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📝 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.