Your Job Told You About FMLA. It Didn't Tell You About This.

When I had my son, I did everything I thought I was supposed to do. I talked to HR. I read the paperwork. I filed my claim.

Then EDD denied it.

I spent nearly a month on the phone, following up, resubmitting, figuring out what had gone wrong. Eventually I got my money. But I also got something else: a very clear picture of a system that was never designed to explain itself to you.

That experience is why I left nearly 20 years in Silicon Valley tech sales and built It's Your Leave.

Here is the thing most California employees don't know:

Your HR department is legally required to tell you about FMLA. FMLA is federal law, it protects your job, and your employer has a legal obligation to notify you about it.

California's paid leave programs — SDI and PFL — are different. These are state programs, funded by the money deducted from your paycheck every single pay period. Your employer does not have a legal obligation to walk you through them. Most don't.

That gap is not an accident. It's just how the system works. And it costs California families real money.

What California actually offers:

California has the longest paid family leave in the country. Between SDI (State Disability Insurance) and PFL (Paid Family Leave), eligible employees can access up to 29 weeks of paid leave — with 25 of those weeks paid at 70 to 90 percent of their income through the state.

That is a significant benefit. It is also one that thousands of families leave on the table every year because nobody told them how to use it.

Why I built IYL:

I am not a lawyer or a financial advisor. I am a former tech worker who got her own claim denied, recovered it, and then spent the next two and a half years helping over 1,100 California families do the same.

The families I work with are not people who made mistakes. They are people who were never given the information they needed in the first place. That is a fixable problem.

At It's Your Leave, I help expecting parents understand what they have earned, file it correctly, and protect every week of it.

If you pay into California SDI — and if you have a W-2, you almost certainly do — this money is yours. You already paid for it. You just need to know how to claim it.

Start here:

Use the free calculator at tools.itsyourleave.com/calculator to see what your leave could look like. Then come back. There is a lot more to cover.