No Maternity Allowance mentioned in contract

[crunchtimes]

I am currently part-time employed by someone who receives direct payments to pay for care/personal assistance.

I am hoping to start a family in the next year or so, I have looked at my contract and there is no mention of Maternity pay/allowance.

Does that mean I still get SMP from the government even if I can get nothing from my employer?

I also run a tiny business from home which doesn't earn me more than £1000 pa at the moment (and probably forever) - does the fact that I am also self-employed mean I wont qualify for SMP at all?

The part time employment is about £20k pa if that matters?

MA is paid by the government and SMP via employer. Would you qualify for SMP? How long have you been with your employer and do you earn above the minimum warnings threshold ? If you don't qualify for SMP you may for maternity allowance? A company is not obliged to pay above statutory amount.

No it just means there is no enhanced package above the statutory pay and leave. Look on the .gov website for details of eligibilty and how the pay is calculated.

No, you should be fine. Statutory maternity pay is set out in law (that is the "statutory" part). It's not something that would necessarily be in a contract because (providing you meet the qualifying criteria), it is an automatic right. Some contracts/ handbooks may contain provisions about maternity pay, but this is usually where the employer offers something over and above the statutory amount.

Re the business from home, I don't know about this I'm afraid, but I would be surprised if it affected your eligibility for SMP from your main job.

you're entitled to statutory benefits even if No mention in contract. ma and smp

Thanks everyone, its a bit of an unknown world to me and no matter how many times I read information on websites, I still don't understand it!

I am actually looking into adoption and probably wont want to return to the job after Adoption/Maternity leave (could be 6 months to a 1 year leave). Do I have to return back to work for a certain number of weeks/months to keep all of the statutory benefits? I would be getting a new job (or self-employment), just not returning to the old one.

No, statutory is not repayable or conditional. Enhanced pay might be.

Statutory you get automatically as long as you have been in the job a certain amount of time - it doesn't have to appear in a contract. Enhanced maternity will be listed in job contracts and may be repayable if you do not return (thankfully mine didn't)

I will have been in the job at least 2 years, maybe 3 (if I can last that long with my boss!) so I assume that's plenty?

You only need to be with same employer for 6 months by 24th week of pg for SMP but you may need to check how adoption leave dates tie in with this.

I've never seen maternity benefits set out in a contract - it's usually in a separate company policy document (as not contractual in that they're likely to want to change it without imposing a change in contracts and all that entails). If policies aren't available on the company intranet or similar, ask HR for a copy - it certainly doesn't mean there's no enhanced payment