Family Care Leave Benefit in Japan: 67% and 93 Days

The bottom line: what you receive by monthly salary (per 30 days)

Source: MHLW and Hello Work, "Family care leave benefit: content and application procedure"[Hello Work], and "The payment limit changes from 1 August 2026"[MHLW]. The social insurance premiums are rough figures for someone aged 40 or over (long-term care premium included) at a Japan Health Insurance Association rate of around 10%

The benefit is tax-free: no income tax and no resident tax. Resident tax, on the other hand, is levied on the previous year's income, so it keeps falling due during the leave, and whatever your employer cannot collect through payroll withholding is billed to you directly. Someone on 300,000 yen a month who hears "you get 67%" and budgets for 200,000 yen will find the gap is around 60,000 yen a month once social insurance premiums and resident tax are taken out.

Different from childcare leave: social insurance premiums are not waived

During childcare leave, health insurance and employees' pension premiums are waived for both the employee and the employer, but family care leave carries no such waiver. Premiums based on your standard monthly remuneration keep accruing during the leave, and because no salary is paid, the employer fronts them and either deducts them from your pay after you return or asks you to transfer the money during the leave.

The reason for the gap lies in how the schemes were built: family care leave is positioned as a short break for putting care arrangements in place. Still, there is little logic in treating it differently from childcare leave while calling for fewer people to quit their jobs over care, and the burden on those affected remains heavy. For how the childcare side works, see money available for childbirth and childcare.

Who qualifies: which relative, and in what condition

• Family members covered: spouse (including a common-law spouse), parents (including adoptive parents), children (including adopted children), a spouse's parents, grandparents, siblings and grandchildren. Living together or being a dependant is not a requirement.
• Condition requiring care: a state in which injury, illness or disability means constant care is needed for two weeks or more. Long-term care insurance certification is not mandatory; the test is care level 2 or above, or the MHLW criteria (12 items covering walking, toileting, eating and so on).
• Your own employment insurance record: in the two years before the leave starts, at least 12 months with 11 or more days that count as a basis for wage payment. On a fixed-term contract, it must not be clear that your contract will end within the six months following the day 93 days after the leave begins.
• No resignation already settled for after the leave: anyone who has already agreed to leave the company after the leave is excluded.

As a workplace scheme, family care leave can be closed off to employees with less than a year of service under a labour-management agreement, but otherwise it is available to permanent and part-time staff alike. Even if your employer says it has no such scheme, the right exists in law.

How the 93 days are counted, and how to use the three splits

The 93 days are a total per family member, counted in calendar days (weekends and holidays included). Because you can split them into three, a realistic pattern looks like this.

If you use up all 93 days on the first leave, you cannot take any more for that family member. Care is a long game, so the standard approach is to keep the first leave short, limited to applying for long-term care insurance, working with the care manager and finding a facility, and save the rest. For day-to-day accompanying and hospital visits, use the family care days off (five a year) described below, along with shorter hours and exemption from overtime.

The benefit is calculated over "payment unit periods" (one month at a time from the first day of leave), with the period containing the final day counted by its actual number of days. If your employer pays you anything during the leave, the amount by which the wage plus the benefit exceeds 80% of your monthly wage amount is deducted.

File within two months of the end of each leave, through your employer

1. Notify your employer that you are taking family care leave. As a rule in writing, at least two weeks before the planned start date, with documents showing the family member's condition (a medical certificate is not mandatory; a long-term care certification notice or the statement on the notification form is enough).
2. Take the leave. No benefit is paid during this time. You have to live on savings in the meantime, which is one more reason to keep the first leave short.
3. After the leave ends, your employer files the family care leave benefit application with Hello Work. The deadline is the last day of the month containing the day two months after the day following the final day of leave[Hello Work]. It goes with the certificate of monthly wage at the start of leave, attendance records, the wage ledger, and a certificate of matters entered in the resident register or similar (something showing your relationship to the family member). You can also file it yourself.
4. Payment lands in about a week. It goes to the personal account written on the application.

If your employer forgets to file, you get nothing, so ask "when will you submit it?" as the leave ends. Even past the two-month deadline, you can still file within the two-year statute of limitations.

Family care days off (five a year) and the April 2025 reform

Separate from family care leave, there are five days a year (ten if you are caring for two or more family members) of family care days off for things like accompanying a relative to hospital or meeting the care manager, and they can be taken by the hour. Whether they are paid is up to your employer's rules, and most treat them as unpaid. There is no benefit attached.

The revision of the Child Care and Family Care Leave Act that took effect in April 2025 changed the following[MHLW].

• Employees with less than six months of service can now take family care days off. The mechanism for excluding them by labour-management agreement was abolished.
• Employers must explain the schemes individually to anyone who reports facing a care situation, and confirm whether they intend to use them. They must also provide information on family care leave and long-term care insurance to every employee in the fiscal year in which they turn 40.
• Teleworking for care purposes became an employer obligation to make efforts. Exemption from overtime can be requested until the care ends, and that right already existed.

The worst outcome is the familiar one: saying nothing because care is hard to bring up, burning through paid holiday, and resigning when you hit the wall. Leaving a job for care reasons does mean unemployment benefit is paid as a specified-reason leaver with no waiting restriction, but over the long run it is better to keep your income and combine the 93 days with family care days off and shorter hours. For easing the cost of care itself see the high-cost long-term care service benefit, and for whether to claim a parent as your dependant see claiming a parent as a dependant.

Frequently asked questions

Summary

• The family care leave benefit is 67% of pre-leave wages. It can be split into up to three installments, totaling 93 days per eligible family member.
• The cap for 30 days is 366,222 yen (revised August 1, 2026). The benefit itself is tax-exempt.
• Unlike childcare leave, social insurance premiums are not waived. For a monthly salary of 300,000 yen, actual take-home pay works out to about 156,000 yen.
• Applications must be filed through the company within two months after each leave period ends, though filing is possible any time within the two-year statute of limitations.
• Keep the first leave to around 30 days, and handle things like accompanying medical appointments with the annual 5-day care leave or shortened working hours instead.

Reference links (sources)

This article is based on the materials below. The payment limit is revised every 1 August, so check the latest figures in the Hello Work materials.

• MHLW and Hello Work, Family care leave benefit: content and application procedure (August 2026) (eligibility, 67%, 93 days in three splits, filing deadline, payment examples)
• MHLW, The payment limit changes from 1 August 2026 (monthly wage cap of 546,600 yen, benefit cap of 366,222 yen)
• MHLW, About the Child Care and Family Care Leave Act (family care leave, family care days off, the April 2025 reform)
• MHLW, Support for balancing work and family care (criteria for the condition requiring care)

Note: this article is general information. The amounts are estimates and vary with wages and social insurance rates. For an individual decision, check with Hello Work or your employer.