Shared Parental Leave

[Suzybiscuits]

Evening,

Need the hive minds help here, always found advice on here pretty decent and helpful!

Im taking maternity leave, 12 months. I get an enhanced rate. My husband and I want to take one months shared parental leave, in July. We work in different places

My work have sent me a breakdown of my
pay which is very confusing. It says im only entitlement to six weeks of my pay at 90% and after that its straight onto SMP at £187 a week-which is nothing, and not what we were expecting! Does opting into SPL mean you cut your entitlement? I should get 3months of 100% pay, so to see six weeks at 90% is very scary….

Im still waiting for my work to get back to me with the calculations so seeing what happened to others who have taken this option?

Thanks for reading

Opting for shared parental leave does reduce your maternity pay, yes, because you are giving some of it up to give to your partner.

What is your employers policy for SPL, does it offer enhanced pay. Some employers offer enhanced maternity but not enhanced SPP so yes converting to SPL could mean you end up with less. You may need to look at parental leave for him or taking it at the end if your employer only offers enhanced mat pay.

My organisations SPL leaflet is just 2 pages long, and doesnt contain any information about pay if you opt into this system, which is why now im really worried we have royally screwed ourselves over by him having a month of my leave

you have to ‘convert’ so stop your mat leave and start SPL instead. Many workplaces at this point won’t pay the occupational maternity pay. Your other option is to do your mat leave until your occupational pay runs out and then share the leave.

many leave your husband takes is taken off your entitlement so if you have 12 months I don’t think he can have any other than his individual paternity leave

Are you going to be off at the same time? Or each take a block of one month, whilst the other is at work?

If you’re both off at the same time then you can stay on maternity leave and curtail it by the month you need, which frees it up for your partner.

You can also choose to curtail your pay or not. You should read both yours and your partners shared parental leave and maternity / paternity leave policies to work out which pay option works out best. For instance if your maternity pay is enhanced, but your partners shared parental pay is not enhanced then it’s probably best not to curtail your pay.

Thank you everyone for your replies. Im hoping its just a mistake on their part to be fair but this stuff is such a minefield isnt it

https://www.gov.uk/plan-shared-parental-leave-pay You can use this tool to work out leave and sharing pay, but it will only show you the statutory amount.

You dont actually have to transfer on to shpl you can curtail your mat leave to create shpl for your partner without transferring onto it yourself.

But yes if you do go onto shpl your mat pay would stop - many companies don't offer paid shpl.

This isn’t correct. You give up the weeks starting backwards. So if OP wants to give up four weeks then it’ll be the last four weeks, which will be unpaid in her case (and in the vast majority of cases).

In this case it just seems like a mistake by HR and purely coincidental that OP is taking SPL.

Thanks everyone :)

Most people do SPL at the end as you have to move from maternity leave to shared leave. You can’t be on maternity leave for 12 months while still leaving a month for your partner on shared parental leave.

When is the baby due? If you both want to take July off it’s better for him to add annual leave onto his paternity leave if you have enhanced maternity pay.

You should be able to stay on maternity leave and pay while you get the enhanced pay and your dh can take shared leave/pay. You need to curtail your leave/pay by 1 month in order to share it with your dh.

https://maternityaction.org.uk/advice/shared-parental-leave-and-pay/

Again - this isn’t correct. OP can remain on maternity leave while her DH takes the unpaid four weeks simultaneously, meaning her pay won’t stop (assuming she is in a paid section of leave, which it sounds like she will be).

She can be on maternity leave while her husband is on shared leave. Read the link

Say OP is due 1st July. She’ll get full pay for 13 weeks. DH can have (say) two weeks of paternity leave, or whatever his work offers him. Then he can have four more weeks of unpaid leave as shared parental leave. Then at the end of (say) a total of six weeks he’ll go back to work, meanwhile OP carries on with her full pay for another seven weeks before dropping down to statutory.

ShPL is amazing but it’s so convoluted and there are so many misunderstandings about it that it’s no wonder it’s massively underutilised!

That’s not correct. If the leave is happening simultaneously the mother can stay on maternity leave and the partner can be on shared parental leave.

Which month of your leave will he be off for? The last month or a random month in the middle?

OP cannot have 12 months maternity and her partner take 1 month SPL.

Doesn’t matter.

In my case, I gave DH three weeks. He took two weeks at Christmas and one week at Easter. All unpaid. They corresponded to approx months 3 and 6 of my maternity leave and didn’t affect any of my pay at all. It just means I have to go back to work three weeks sooner.

Is this roughly what you want to do @Suzybiscuits

https://www.plan-shared-parental-leave.service.gov.uk/planner/examples/birth/extending-time-as-a-family

if so maybe send this to your HR department and ask to remain on maternity leave for 11 months.

All these posts rather prove my point! 😅

No one has said she can.

By the way OP, ShPL works in weeks not months. So you’ll have to decide if you want to give him five or four weeks 😊

Also OP unless your DH’s workplace has a paid shared parental leave policy keep in mind he’s entitled to use 18 weeks over the 18 years of your child’s life as unpaid parental leave.
If you don’t anticipate him regularly using this unpaid time at a later date he could use a few weeks of it instead of SPL and you wouldn’t have to give him the month from your leave.

The OP literally said it was her plan? It’s in the OP.

I'm sure OP is aware that in order for her dh to take a month of shared leave that she will have to cut her leave short by 1 month so she would have 11 months leave instead. @Suzybiscuits you know this?