I was relatively recently involved in a similar situation: my wife's former employer said they will not offer her paid maternity leave of any length, despite th

I was relatively recently involved in a similar situation: my wife's former employer said they will not offer her paid maternity leave of any length, despite them mentioning in that they would accommodate her when she was getting hired. After she used all her vacation days and sick days to take just barely 6 weeks (about half of what you really need to recover from childbirth with no complications), she started looking for a new job. Found one quickly, and with a nice salary increase too. The moral of the story is that you should accommodate your team member in any way possible or this critical person will leave after their maternity leave for good. If they are so critical to your team that you feel you cannot lose them for a month (about 1/3 of what you should give them), then can you really afford to lose them shortly after they come back? As for how to handle this in terms of salary: you should offer short term disability insurance to your employees that covers maternity leave. It's too late now, since you typically have to hold the policy for over a year before maternity leave is covered, but do this for the future. Good luck!