Your guide to NICU leave in Illinois
Starting June 1, 2026, the Illinois Family Neonatal Intensive Care Leave Act (820 ILCS 157) requires covered employers to provide job-protected leave to employees whose child has been admitted to a neonatal intensive care unit (NICU). This article covers what the law requires of your organization, which employees are covered, and how leave requests are handled in Cocoon.
Which employees are covered?
If your company has 16 or more employees, you are a covered employer under this law.
The law has:
No tenure requirement. Employees are eligible from day one.
No minimum hours requirement. Part-time, full-time, and variable-hour employees are all covered.
No FMLA eligibility prerequisite. Even employees who do not qualify for FMLA — new hires, part-time workers below the 1,250-hour threshold — are entitled to this leave.
The only qualifying trigger is that the employee's child must be admitted to a NICU. The leave is available only while the child remains hospitalized.
How many days is the employee entitled to?
The employee's entitlement depends on the size of your Illinois workforce:
16 to 50 employees: Up to 10 days of NICU leave
51 or more employees: Up to 20 days of NICU leave
The employee may take this leave intermittently while the child remains in the NICU. Employers may enforce the employee to a minimum 2-hour increment. Reminder – Cocoon only supports a min-increment of 1 minute.
A note on Cocoon's default configuration: Cocoon defaults to the maximum entitlement of 20 days for all covered Illinois employers. If your organization has between 16 and 50 Illinois employees and should be configured for the 10-day tier, please contact your Cocoon account team to adjust this.
How does this interact with FMLA?
Illinois NICU leave and FMLA operate sequentially, not concurrently:
FMLA-eligible employees must exhaust their available FMLA entitlement first. Once FMLA has been fully used, Illinois NICU leave activates — provided the child is still hospitalized in the NICU. This means Illinois NICU leave is additional time beyond FMLA, not a replacement for it.
FMLA-ineligible employees — such as new hires who haven't reached 12 months of tenure, or part-time employees who haven't met the 1,250-hour threshold — receive Illinois NICU leave as a standalone, immediate entitlement. They do not need to exhaust any other leave first. Their NICU leave days are available from the date of the child's NICU admission.
This distinction matters because employees who would not otherwise have any federal job-protected leave are fully covered by this state law from their first day of employment.
Is the leave paid?
Illinois NICU leave is unpaid. Illinois does not have a state-run paid family leave program, so there is no state benefit that provides wage replacement during this time.
Employers cannot require the employee to substitute accrued paid time off during NICU leave. However, the employee may voluntarily choose to use their accrued paid time off to receive pay during this period. This is a decision between the employee and your HR team — Cocoon does not administer voluntary paid time off substitution for this leave type.
Will this extend the employee's total leave duration?
It depends. Illinois NICU leave is additive to FMLA. It provides additional days of job-protected leave beyond whatever FMLA the employee has taken. This leave may run concurrently with any employer paid or unpaid time.
For FMLA-eligible employees, total time away could include up to 12 weeks of FMLA plus up to 10 or 20 days of Illinois NICU leave (depending on your employer size tier), provided the child remains hospitalized throughout.
For FMLA-ineligible employees, the NICU days represent a standalone block of job-protected time.
During this leave, the employee is entitled to reinstatement to the same or an equivalent position and continuation of benefits.
How does the employee request NICU leave in Cocoon?
All employees planning and taking parental leave in Illinois will see the following screen in Cocoon alerting them of their options under Illinois’ leave program:
Employees will need Cocoon's manual assistance to initiate this because they cannot currently request or model this leave design directly in Cocoon's platform.
How the request is handled depends on where the employee is in their leave process:
For employees with an existing parental leave plan filed in Cocoon
If the employee already has a parental leave plan in Cocoon and their child is admitted to a NICU, the employee should email:
[email protected] Subject line: "Request for IL NICU Leave"
They should include their name, the date of the child's NICU admission, and the dates being requested. Cocoon's support team will:
Review the employee's existing leave plan and FMLA usage
Determine when Illinois NICU leave activates (after FMLA exhaustion, or immediately if the employee is FMLA-ineligible)
For employees with no leave plan submitted yet
If the employee has not yet filed a leave plan in Cocoon — for example, a new hire whose child was admitted to the NICU before setting up parental leave — the employee should email:
[email protected] Subject line: "Request for IL NICU Leave"
They should include their name, employment start date, and the date of the child's NICU admission. Cocoon's support team will:
Confirm the employee's eligibility under the law
Determine whether the employee also qualifies for FMLA or other leave
Walk the employee through next steps
In both cases, the employee can also reach Cocoon by clicking the "Contact us" button in their Cocoon dashboard. Cocoon is here to support your team.