Shared Parental Leave

[fancyfuchsia]

Hi all,

I'd like to hear from those of you who have opted for shared Parental Leave before - is it possible for DH and I to take the first month or so off together in order to spend more time as a family? 2 weeks paternity seems so incredibly short!

I would imagine the time he takes off at the beginning would be deducted from the end of my 'typical maternity leave' meaning I would just have to go back a month or so sooner? Is this how it works? Has anybody else opted for this? What were your experiences?

I've read all the info on the .gov pages but still a little confused about how the time is allowed to be spent, so looking forward to hearing how it has worked for some of you other mamas!

Your dh should be entities to his own 2 weeks. So if he has 1 month he’d only be using 2 weeks from yours I presume.

Check his employer supports spl and also what the salary for those weeks wouod be (it might be enhanced or not)

We did 2.5 weeks at the beginning using his holiday and then I went back to work at 6 months and he started his leave 6-12 months and worked for us. As I had so much annual leave accrured I was working 2-3 days / week 6-9 months

You can take as much as you like from your 52 weeks allowance to add to your DH's statutory entitlement of 2 weeks paternity leave.

For us, I took 9 months off and DH took 3 months - he used annual leave entitlement to extend his 2 weeks paternity leave to 4 weeks due to premature birth and EMCS under GA. He then took 3 months after I was back at work. It was utterly worth it. I felt awful going back to work when DS was only 9 months old, but seeing how much more hands on DH is compared to most of our acquaintances with similar age DC I don't regret it at all. I swore I'd give working full time 6 weeks before making any decisions and it was fine after 3 weeks.

I'd love to get a decent answer to this. I have friends who did it, where he took three months (effectively her last three months of unpaid time) at the same time as her first three months and she went back to work after nine months, but they both work in HR for the civil service. When I asked my HR (private company) they didn't have a bloody clue.

Hi fancyfuchsia,

I'm pregnant currently myself so have looked into SPL in great detail! My HR were clueless so I've done a lot of my own research and they've agreed that it all sounds fine.

First of all - one PP said to check if yours/his employer supports SPL - well, by law every employer HAS to allow it if taken in 1 block of leave (subject to criteria about minimum length of time worked at the company etc). What they don't HAVE to support and is subject to agreement between yourselves, is if SPL is split into 3 separate blocks, but I don't know if you want to do that - good to know that is an option though.

You asked about how the time is accounted and will his time off be deducted from your time off etc. As others have said, yes.

There are three types of leave :

• maternity leave for mother (up to 52 weeks allowed)
• paternity leave for father (allowed up to 2 weeks at beginning, not counted as part of any other allowance)
• shared parental leave for either parent (can be taken any time within the first year after birth, can overlap or not overlap, and total of mother's matL weeks + mother's spl weeks + father's spl weeks must not exceed 52)

The mother's 2 mandatory weeks after birth are part of the total 52 weeks of whatever leave type the mother is using.
You have to give an official 'notice of curtailment' of MatL before you can start SPL, and that isn't as easy to change as just changing a MatL end date.

So it sounds like the pattern that you might want to do is something like :

Father : 2 weeks PatL + 2 weeks SPL
Mother : 2 weeks MatL + 48 weeks SPL

Hope that helps???