Most vesting schedules are tied to “continuous service.”
Meaning: you have to be actively working to vest.
When you go on leave, the treatment depends entirely on how your company’s equity plan is written.
The three most common outcomes…
1. Vesting pauses
You take 12 weeks of leave. Your vesting clock stops for 12 weeks. Your cliff date moves. Your entire schedule shifts.
2. Vesting continues
Some companies treat paid leave as continuous service. Vesting doesn't pause. You don't lose anything.
3. Vesting continues for paid leave, pauses for unpaid
The compromise position.
FMLA gives you 12 weeks of job-protected leave in the U.S.
But only about 25% of private sector workers have access to fully paid family leave through their employer.
If your company offers 6 weeks paid, your vesting runs for 6 weeks and stops for the other 6.
What the data actually shows
According to NASPP research, over 90% of companies do not adjust vesting for statutory or paid leave.
And 83% don't adjust it for unpaid leave either.
So the majority of companies are not pausing vesting during maternity leave.
But what about the companies that do?
Let's say you're a senior engineer with 100,000 options vesting over 4 years (2,083 shares per month).
You take 6 months of leave. Vesting pauses the whole time.
That's 12,500 shares delayed.
At a $10/share 409A valuation: $125,000 in equity that shifts on your schedule.
Not lost forever necessarily.
But women who take maternity leave are statistically more likely to leave their jobs within 2 years…
So “delayed” often becomes “gone.”
However, the cliff is where it really gets really brutal.
Standard vesting: 1-year cliff, then monthly after.
You join in January. Your cliff is the following January.
You have a baby in October and take 3 months leave. Your cliff moves to April.
You come back. Things have changed. You leave in March.
You vest zero shares.
You worked nearly a year and a half.
You get nothing…
Pausing vesting for leaves penalizes caretakers
Women take more and longer leaves than men; for maternity, but also to care for family members.
A policy that pauses vesting during leave is statistically a policy that punishes women.
In some jurisdictions, altering vesting based on leave status may actually be considered discriminatory, precisely because maternity leave is the most common leave type and women are disproportionately affected.
What the law says (and doesn't)
The U.S. has no federal law requiring vesting to continue during maternity leave.
FMLA protects your job and your benefits but equity is often classified separately from “benefits” in plan documents.
California, New York, and a handful of states have stronger protections but even there, the treatment of equity during leave is murky and inconsistently enforced.
Most equity plans were drafted by lawyers working for the company. Not for you!
What to actually do
Before you sign any offer, ask specifically: does vesting pause during parental leave? Get it in writing that leave will be treated as continuous service. Ask what happens to your cliff if leave overlaps with it.
If you're already at a company and planning to have children: request the full equity plan document (you’re entitled to it). Push for a policy change before you need it!
If you're a founder building a company: write continuous vesting during parental leave into your equity plan from day one.
The bigger picture
The gender wealth gap doesn't always just come from pay differences… it can also come from a thousand small policy defaults that were never designed with women in mind. Vesting schedules were written assuming continuous, uninterrupted careers. By people who were not going to be the ones taking leave. And the cost gets quietly passed to the people who do.
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