Reduction Of Benefits While On Short Term Disability / Paid Family Leave

My wife and I live in New York. She gave birth to our son in December. The way her maternity leave is set up is that she takes 8 weeks of short term disability followed by 12 weeks of PFL.

Her employer informed her that we would still be responsible for her portion of the contribution to medical benefits and to send them a check each month. We have sent a check twice, covering January and February. Upon looking at her paystub for the short term disability, the usual deduction for medical benefits was also taken out. Ok, why are you trying to double dip here?

She recently received an email stating that her employer will no longer cover ANY portion of the family benefits, only her own, the employee benefits. This resulted in them requesting approximately $5300 per month for January and February.

We replied that this is unacceptable and notified them of the wage deduction from her paystub. They replied with a new, lesser figure that we owed taking that deduction into account.

We have not paid anything beyond what her normal contribution would be had she still been working. In March she will go off of short term disability and onto NYS Paid Family Leave.

A new email is now requesting payment for January, February, and March. This email also threatens to drop our coverage entirely if we don't pay out setup a payment plan. We have not paid.

Her employee handbook states that insurance benefits will remain the same throughout leave.

We are pretty certain that this qualifies as a reduction of benefits.

Are we under the same protections while she is on Short Term Disability as we are when Paid Family Leave kicks in?

All of this seems highly illegal.

We had one consultation with an employment lawyer that pretty much told us we were screwed for January and February but there are additional protections specific to PFL.

What's our move?

I think we need to speak to another lawyer.

Thanks, this is very stressful in a time that is supposed to be about bonding and caring for our newborn.