An HR officer gets a maternity leave application on her desk. She pulls up the old template, counts 60 days for a normal delivery or 78 days for a Caesarean, and starts drafting the approval memo. Somewhere in the process, someone mentions that the rule changed years ago — it's not 60 or 78 days anymore, it's 105. By then the applicant has already made plans around the wrong number, and the office is scrambling to explain the difference.
This mix-up is more common than most employers admit. The Expanded Maternity Leave Law has been in effect since 2019, but plenty of companies are still running payroll and leave computations on rules that no longer apply. Here's what the law actually requires, and where employers usually go wrong.
The 105 Days, and What's on Top
Republic Act No. 11210 grants 105 days of paid maternity leave for every instance of childbirth, regardless of whether the delivery is normal or through C-section. A qualified solo parent is entitled to an additional 15 days, under the requirements of RA No. 11861, the Expanded Solo Parents Welfare Act, which amended the original Solo Parents' Welfare Act. Not every unmarried mother automatically qualifies as a "solo parent" for this purpose — RA 11861 sets out specific categories and conditions, so it's worth confirming an employee's status rather than assuming it.
In case of a miscarriage or an emergency termination of pregnancy, the law provides 60 days of paid leave. These benefits are available for every instance of childbirth, miscarriage, or emergency termination of pregnancy, subject to the applicable statutory requirements — the law removed the old cap that limited paid maternity benefits to the first four deliveries.
Employees may also extend the leave by another 30 days without pay, subject to written notice to the employer. Ordinarily, that notice should be given at least 45 days before the end of the maternity leave, though the rules make an exception for medical emergencies, where notice can follow afterward.
Who Is Actually Covered
This is where a lot of employers get it wrong. The benefit is not limited to regular employees — qualified female workers in the private sector may be entitled regardless of employment status, including probationary, casual, project-based, or fixed-term arrangements. Being on a fixed-term or probationary contract does not, by itself, disqualify an employee.
That said, actual entitlement to the SSS-funded portion of the benefit depends on SSS's own qualification rule: the employee generally needs at least three monthly SSS contributions within the 12 months immediately preceding the semester of childbirth, miscarriage, or emergency termination of pregnancy. That's a contribution requirement, not an employment-status requirement — so a newly hired employee isn't automatically excluded, but she also isn't automatically qualified just because she's employed. It's worth noting, too, that if an employer fails to remit contributions for someone who should have been covered, the law holds the employer liable for damages equivalent to the benefit the employee would otherwise have received. Getting remittances right isn't just about the employee's benefit — it's the employer's own exposure.
The Part Most Companies Forget: Allocating Days to the Father
The law allows a mother to allocate up to seven (7) days of her maternity leave to the child’s father, whether or not they are married, or, if the father has died, is absent, or is incapacitated, to a qualified alternate caregiver — such as a relative within the fourth degree of consanguinity or her current partner who shares the same household. The allocation requires written notice to the mother’s employer and, where applicable, the employer of the father or alternate caregiver. The mother must notify her employer in writing of her decision to allocate up to seven (7) days of her maternity leave credits to the child’s father or qualified alternate caregiver. The father or alternate caregiver must likewise notify his or her own employer in writing of the availment and the inclusive dates of the allocated leave. The father or alternate caregiver is then granted paid leave by his or her own employer for the allocated days, subject to the requirements of the law and its implementing rules. For the child’s father, this benefit is over and above any separate paternity leave to which he may be entitled under the Paternity Leave Act. HR teams that are not aware of this provision sometimes push back when a male employee files for leave under his partner’s allocated credits — but this is a right the law expressly grants, not a favor, and it is distinct from ordinary paternity leave. One limit worth noting: the seven-day allocation does not apply in cases of miscarriage or emergency termination of pregnancy.
Who Actually Pays, and When
For a qualified SSS-covered employee, the employer must advance the maternity benefit within 30 days from the filing of the maternity leave application — not simply "at the start of the leave," which can create confusion about the actual deadline. The employer later applies for reimbursement from SSS.
It also helps to separate two things that often get lumped together: the SSS maternity benefit itself, which the employer advances and SSS later reimburses, and the salary differential — the additional amount some employers must pay so the employee receives full pay rather than just the SSS-computed amount. Not every employer owes the salary differential in every case; the law recognizes exemptions for certain distressed establishments, small retail or service establishments and other enterprises employing not more than ten workers, qualified micro-business enterprises, and employers already providing benefits equal to or greater than what the law requires. These exemptions are not simply self-declared; the law subjects them to the applicable DOLE guidelines and to the employer's annual submission of justification for approval. Whether a particular business falls under one of these exemptions is worth checking case by case rather than assuming either way.
Where HR Teams Usually Slip Up
A few patterns show up again and again in practice: computing leave using the old 60/78-day framework instead of the current 105 days; treating employment status alone as a disqualifier without checking the actual SSS contribution record; requiring an employee to sign a resignation letter or similar undertaking as a condition for receiving the benefit — something that has no apparent basis in RA 11210 and risks being read as an attempt to defeat the employee's statutory rights and security of tenure; telling an employee her pay will only come "once SSS releases the reimbursement," which gets the order backwards, since the employer's advance-payment obligation isn't conditioned on first receiving reimbursement from SSS; and treating the father's or caregiver's allocated leave as optional or discretionary rather than a statutory entitlement.
A Quick Checklist for HR
Before the next maternity leave application lands on your desk, it helps to confirm a few things in advance: that your leave forms and payroll templates reflect 105 days plus 15 for a qualified solo parent (not the old 60/78-day framework); that your policy doesn't exclude employees based on employment status alone, while still checking their actual SSS contribution record; that your process advances payment within 30 days of the application rather than waiting on SSS reimbursement first; that you know whether your business qualifies for a salary-differential exemption, or whether you owe it in full; and that your HR staff understand how the paternal allocation works — including that it's separate from ordinary paternity leave — so a father's request isn't mistaken for an unusual or unauthorized ask.
Getting this right isn't just about avoiding a complaint. It's one of the more visible ways a company signals, to its own employees, whether its policies are actually current — or just inherited from a template nobody has revisited in years.