I am going to be taking maternity leave in a few months and want to either quit working for a few months or find a new job right away because my company has been making negative changes, and the work has become far too stressful with no growth opportunities. The way my company's process works is 1 week PTO > short term disability leave > parental leave > then using as much of my PTO as I want. With my PTO stacking after the leaves, I can probably be off 2.5-3 months after birth.
I have seen some posts that there can be penalties for quitting after maternity leave, but those comments were mostly related to FMLA or the actual leave policies. I will not be taking FMLA (unless some sort of unexpected medical emergency). If not taking FMLA, can there still be a penalty for quitting right after my last PTO days? The PTO has already been earned, and my company normally pays out your banked PTO hours if you quit in normal circumstances.
I am having trouble finding my company's policy on quitting in this scenario. If I contact my HR department would I get flagged or something if I ask about this in advance?
Also are there any keywords usually written into those policies? (sometimes I can find the right policy form using keywords, I am just not sure what to search for. It was not in the parental leave policy information).