About fmlaviolationcalc.com

fmlaviolationcalc.com is a free employment law resource maintained by The Click Lab. Our damages calculator and guides help employees and their families understand what the Family and Medical Leave Act actually guarantees, recognize the signs that an employer has interfered with or retaliated against protected leave, and get a plain-English starting estimate of what a violation might be worth — before they've had a chance to sit down with an employment attorney.

What we do

We translate the FMLA’s statutory and regulatory framework — eligibility rules, employer notice obligations, the interference-versus-retaliation distinction, and the back pay, liquidated damages, and front pay remedies available under 29 U.S.C. § 2617 — into calculators and guides that don’t require a law degree to follow. Most employees only encounter this body of law once, at the exact moment they're least equipped to research it. Our aim is to get someone from “I think my leave was handled wrong” to “here's what likely happened, and here's what I should ask an attorney about” in the time it takes to read one page.

Who this calculator is for

Most people land here in one of a few situations: an employee who was terminated, demoted, or passed over shortly after requesting or returning from FMLA leave and wants to know if that timing matters legally; someone whose leave request was denied, delayed, or never properly designated as FMLA and isn’t sure whether that counts as interference; and family members trying to help a spouse or parent figure out next steps while the two-year filing clock is already running. We built the Site around getting each of these readers to a useful, honest starting point quickly, rather than burying the practical answer under statutory citations.

How the estimate is built

The full mechanics — how back pay is calculated and reduced for mitigation, when liquidated damages double the award, how front pay is estimated when reinstatement isn’t practical, and what the calculator deliberately leaves out (attorney fees, interest, benefits losses, emotional distress) — are documented in detail on our methodology page. At a high level: the calculator starts from lost wages over the affected period, adjusts for whether the employer’s conduct looks like bad faith, and layers in front pay for termination-type violations where the employee hasn’t found comparable work. The result is a range, not a verdict, because FMLA damages genuinely vary case to case.

What we don’t do

We don’t provide legal advice, and reading this Site doesn’t create an attorney-client relationship with anyone. Whether a specific employer action actually violates the FMLA depends on facts a calculator can’t weigh — how the leave request was documented, what the employer said and when, and how the governing circuit has interpreted the statute. We also don’t evaluate individual cases or review specific settlement offers. Separately, the homepage includes an optional case-review form that connects readers who want their situation evaluated with attorneys — that’s a disclosed paid referral, not editorial content, and using it is always optional (see our privacy policy). If you believe your FMLA rights were violated, a licensed employment attorney in your state is the right next step — see our contact page for guidance on finding one and on the filing deadlines that make waiting risky.

Editorial standards

Every guide and reference page is written from primary sources — the FMLA’s statutory text, its implementing regulations at 29 C.F.R. Part 825, and published federal case law — and reviewed before publication. We don’t publish thin content: each page exists to answer a specific question an employee facing an FMLA problem would actually ask, with enough detail to be genuinely useful during a stressful stretch of their employment. Our full editorial workflow and sourcing policy are on the editorial team page.

How we make money

Display advertising via Google AdSense. We don’t accept paid placements in our editorial content, and no law firm pays for coverage or a favorable mention in our guides. Separately, we offer an optional case-review form on the homepage: if you submit it, your information is shared with attorneys who may compensate The Click Lab Agency LLC for the referral. That’s a disclosed advertising product, separate from our editorial content, and using it is always optional. See our privacy policy for details on data handling, including exactly what’s shared if you use that form.

Contact

Questions, corrections, or feedback: see our contact page.