Maternity Leave

[jankas]

I booked 12 months maternity leave - but my 39 weeks of maternity statotary pay has now finished. Is there anything else I can claim. We have working and child tax credits. Does anyone know please

I think you are technically still employed so you can't go for job seekers. Maybe use the entitled to website? You can request to go back to work earlier if not.

No there's nothing else unless you want to check whether you'd be better off on universal credit. Lots of people are better off but it has a bad press so they get frightened of even thinking of checking to see if they could be better off.

No. I also chose to take 12 months and technically it’s 3 months unpaid leave you don’t qualify for any benefits.

happy to be corrected!

You can claim universal credit. If you have a partner, they will take their salary into account which may affect what you get. You can check what you are likely to receive on the ‘entitled to’ website 😊

Does UC take into account if you are a home owner or not? Does it assess savings? And what is your partners threshold for earnings that would make you not eligible?

Everyone's threshold will be different depending on circumstances. Uc is made up of different elements. Everyone will get a standard element ( couples or single), then if you have kids you will get child/ childrens elements, if you rent you get a rent element which will depend on your local housing allowance which will be different in different parts of the country. All these elements that you are eligible for are added up then earnings reduce it. If you have kids on the claim then the first £344( if you have a rent element on your claim ) or £573 ( if mortgage), is disregarded from earnings before earnings reduce your award by 55p for each pound earned.
If oyu have savings over 16k you cannot claim UC. Any earnings over 6k will reduce your monthly payment by £4.35 for each £250 over 6k.

@Babyroobs thank you. And with regards to savings, is it combined savings with me and husband? Or individual savings? Due to go on SMP in Oct and worrying about the rise in bills / fact we will have a newborn over winter so I will inevitably use heating during the day etc. and so starting to explore all options.

Yes it would be a joint claim, so they would look at capital and earnings for both of you. So you would get £525.72 couples element ( assuming one of you is over 25), and £244.58 child element assuming this is your first child. So your total UC would be £770.30 per month if you have no rent to pay. Say your total earnings are £2000, then that would just about wipe out any entitlement., unless you have savings over 6k.

@Babyroobs thanks so much for explaining, that all makes a bit more sense now. So basically from what you've said we wouldn't be entitled to any help, which is totally fine - rules are rules. Just wanted to make sure we weren't missing out on something we were entitled to as am starting to feel a bit stressed about money! Thanks for your help :) I'll have to get creative on mat leave to make a few extra pennies :)

Do check on one of the online calculators just to be certain.