Universal credit and maternity pay! Help!

[november90]

Hi everyone!

I have a 3 year old and I'm 28 weeks pregnant soon to go on mat leave. For the first 16 weeks my employer contributes to my mat pay to meet my salary, after then I get stat mat pay. Can anyone advise how that effects UC? The job center said it should increase as my pay goes down but I'm reading conflicting info online and I'm so concerned I'll be a single mum with £600 a month with for 2 children!!

My husband just left me out of the blue so never expected to be in this boat. Currently living with parents!

SMP is treated the same way as wages are, so UC should increase as wages go down as there will be less deductions for earnings. Uc works by giving you different elements - standard single element for yourself, 2 x childrens elements and a rent element if you rent. Then wages reduce your UC. If you rent then the first £287 of wages is disregarded before wages start to reduce your UC amount and if you do not claim the rent element then the first £503 is disregarded.

So basically you would get £317 standard element for yourself ( assuming you are over 25), £277 for your eldest child , £231 for the baby. So your total Uc would be approx. £825 per month.
Then you take your net wages/ smp after deductions, take away the first £503, then multiply by 0.63 and this is the amount that is deducted from your total Uc for wages.

I thought SMP was deducted £ for £?

Maternity Allowance ( paid by the government) is deducted pound for pound. SMP is treated the same way as wages.

Aaah, thank you.

Oh god it's so confusing isn't it!
I used the entitled to calculator and it seemed to suggest I would still get a contribution but I'm not sure it's accurate!
I normally get approx £900 wage a month (I'm on a salary!), but as I said my employer will only contribute to my wage on top of stat mat pay for 16 weeks 😬

If you only earn £900 a month then you would get a decent amount of UC even whilst on full pay, you would probably even get some now whilst you only have one child.

Thank you! I only work part time so my salary isn't amazing unfortunately. I've not had my first instalment yet but I think it's about £90 a week from the calculator, which obviously I am very grateful for! I will get a maternity pay schedule soon from work so I might send it to someone at UC and see if they can advise me as this just isn't my strong point and I get so nervous about money!

Won't your ex being giving you child maintenance?

Child maintenance would not affect Uc anyway.