Am I entitled to 13 weeks unpaid parental leave?

[HensMum]

I've just come back to work after a year's maternity leave. I stuck 3 weeks annual leave plus one week parental leave onto the end of my mat leave. I had assumed that the parental leave would be unpaid but my HR dept tell me that as I'm on a TUPE contract (transferred from another organisation a few years ago) it is actually paid which is lovely BUT also that I've only got one more week of paid parental leave until DS is 5.

I've had a little Google and it looks like the norm is 13 weeks unpaid leave until the age of 5. Is it just the norm or a legal requirement?

[flowerybeanbag]

You are entitled to 13 weeks unpaid parental leave, yes. Sounds very generous of your employer (or previous employer at least) to offer some paid parental leave.

I would expect this paid portion to form part of the total 13 weeks to which you are entitled, so if you get 2 weeks of it paid, you will have 11 weeks unpaid remaining to you.

I'm not sure what the is for - were you hoping for more paid leave? It's certainly not the norm to offer any of it paid ime.

Directgov about parental leave.

[HensMum]

Thank you Flowery. The shock is that I thought I'd have another 12 weeks to use and it turns out I have only 1. I'm not really that fussed if they are paid or not and I know I'm very lucky that two of them will be.
Thanks for the link. Will show it to my HR people tomorrow.

[flowerybeanbag]

Well you do definitely have a total of 13 weeks, even though most of it will be unpaid. It maybe that the HR person was just letting you know how many weeks paid you had left and wasn't referring at all to the unpaid portion.