My Husband Isn’t Getting Paid For Paternity Leave

My husband works for a large corporation in the freezer warehouse as a Hi-Lo driver. He has worked there for 8 years. We had our daughter in Sept. of 2025, and he was told he had a 12 month window to take his 4 weeks of paternity leave, and that he could split it up if he wished to. So he took 2 weeks off when she was born, and saved the rest to take later. When he took the first two weeks of paid leave, they messed it up somehow, and he wasn’t paid. He then had to raise hell and borrow money so we could get our bills paid at the end of the month, and eventually he was compensated. Somebody in the corporate line didn’t enter something correctly, and so he wasn’t paid on time.

Fast forward to this past month. Because he had been burned the first time, he was very careful and made it known he wanted to make sure everything was in order. He applied for his paternity leave and his manager stood behind him as he entered the request into the computer, it was approved, and he thought all was well. Except once again, he wasn’t paid. This time, he called and asked what was going on, and was told to enter it into the computer (which he already had) and then in checking online, he found out the policy says you have to take paid paternity leave within 6 months of the birth. Management hadn’t realized this, and he found that the policy had been updated in the last 7 months (he doesn’t know what the update was or if it pertained to this.)

The question is, if they refuse to pay him, do we have legal grounds to fight it? He has screenshots and voicemails showing it was approved and it should have been paid.

Location: Michigan

EDIT: To clarify, it’s not accrued PTO, it’s 4 weeks paid paternity leave. He split it up in case something came up and he needed to take the rest to give me a break later on. Many people at his work have done the same. I had no paid leave, only unpaid. He was not informed of the policy change, he found out about it through his own research, even his managers were unaware.