The written notice to employees before Maryland FAMLI withholding

The rule, in the regulation's own words

“An employer shall provide written notice to all of its employees of the commencement of contribution withholding and any changes to employee contributions at least 1 pay period prior to the commencement or change.” COMAR 09.42.02.05D

Read that clause again, because the important phrase is at least 1 pay period prior, not a date. There is no statutory 1 December. There is no fixed day in the calendar that applies to everybody. The deadline is derived from the employer's own payroll schedule and it is different for a weekly payroll and a monthly one.

That is the single most useful thing on this site and it is the thing nobody else computes. The Department publishes the rule. This tells you your date.

Your date depends on your first 2027 pay date

Work backwards from the first pay date in 2027 on which FAMLI is withheld. Step back one full pay period. That is your latest safe notice date, and if it lands on a weekend or a holiday it moves earlier, not later: payment dates get next-business-day relief, notice dates do not. COMAR 09.42.02.08E

Computed by famliclock.com on 21 September 2026 from the pay dates shown. Change the first pay date and every answer changes. Notice that weekly comes out later than every two weeks: a shorter pay period means a shorter run-up.

If you do not yet know your first 2027 pay date, the calculator falls back to Tuesday 1 December 2026, which is early enough to be safe on every one of the four frequencies. Treat it as a safe default, not as a legal deadline, and replace it with your real date as soon as you have it.

What the notice has to say

The statute sets out what the employee notice must cover: the right to receive benefits, how to file a claim, the employee's own responsibilities in notifying the employer and the penalties for not doing so, the right to file a complaint, job protection, and the prohibited acts with their penalties and complaint procedures. LE 8.3-801

The Department has not yet published the templates. The regulations reserve the right to require approved forms for notices, claims and dispute resolution, and say those forms will be provided later. Until they land, an employer drafting its own notice is guessing at format, not at content.

We will not draft the notice for you, and you should be wary of anyone who offers to. Once MDOL publishes a template, using it is free and using anything else is a risk you took for no reason. Watch the Department's employer pages.

The other notices you owe, which are not one-offs

The withholding notice is the one with a date in front of it. It is not the only one.

The six-month pre-benefit notice is the one most employers have not put in a calendar yet. Its nominal date, 3 July 2027, is a Saturday, and because notices move earlier rather than later it lands on the preceding business day.

If you miss it

Missing the notice does not by itself carry a stated penalty in the contributions chapter. The adjacent risk is the one that costs money: if you have not told your employees, in practice you often have not started the deduction either, and an employer that fails to make the deduction is considered to have elected to pay the employee's portion for each pay period it missed. COMAR 09.42.02.07A For a 20-person firm on a $1.3m payroll paid every two weeks, that is $225.00 a pay period, unrecoverable.