Do husbands support wives financially during maternity leave?

[DogsAndGin]

Hi everyone,

Pregnant with our first baby and starting to think about saving up and preparing for mat leave.

Currently, DH earns more than I do, and we spend the same proportion of our income on bills etc, and then the rest is ours to do with what we wish.

However, when I go onto mat leave, I will be getting about £800 a month on average across 12 months. If I am very careful, this will just about cover my direct debits and responsibilities, and will leave me with absolutely nothing at all for any spending money, birthdays and Xmas, trips out etc.

This will be too tight, so, looking at my options:

• I can’t save anything in advance (every spare penny is going on home renovations).
• I don’t have a job where I can get any overtime or bonuses.
• I could sell my car (would probably get £2000, plus save on insurance, tax, mot, fuel).

DH’s income will remain largely the same throughout baby’s first year, as he’ll only take two weeks paternity leave.

So, my very naive questions! -

For those of you in the same situation, (married/cohabiting and both full time employed) - is there a way families tend to make this inequality in loss of earnings fairer?

Do husbands tend to support their wives financially during mat leave?

Neither of us want to put baby into nursery during their first year, and I don’t think that would be cost effective anyway.

DH refuses to take more than 2 weeks paternity leave, so we can’t split the leave (and loss of earnings) that way. Both he and I want for me to stay with the baby for the first year.

You both need to have the same spending money after paying for the baby stuff and bills, which will mean baby costs and bills will be covered first and remaining split between you.

I work for the NHS and will be getting roughly £1200 a month smoothed over 12 months. My usual take home is 2k and my husband's is 2.5k.

We have decided that all of our joint and personal bills e.g. phone contracts, life insurance etc. will be paid for by him, and I will save £300 a month with the rest, approx £900 a month as fun money.

We also split our bills 50/50 although he earns more, as my personal outgoings are much less, so that way we have roughly the same amount to spend on what we like.

If we continued to split 50/50 on mat leave then I'd be - £176 to be exact 😂 and he'd be topping up my money anyway so it made sense to do it the way I described above.

As others have said he absolutely needs to contribute to the care of his child. Full term nursery is £1200 so you can start by expecting 50% of that if he wants to kick off!

Very much agree with this, especially if you're married! I'm also taking a year of maternity leave soon, and I'm on quite a bit of a higher wage than my husband, so it's going to be quite a drop in income for a while - but it wouldn't even cross our minds for me to be limited to spending what I'll be bringing in!

We both took leave and both supported each other financially. We’ve always had joint finances and don’t have that ‘this is mine’ mindset though.

And not only that, but my DH has offered to take a break from paying towards his pension to allow a bit of extra income over the year too.

You just need to both do what you can to ensure you can provide for the baby and to keep you all safely over the next year.

Yes, your joint money should be joint. Both pay full salary/maternity pay into the joint account for use as you will. You also need to keep your pension topped up from this pot.

If he wants you to take the year and refuses to take more than 2 weeks how can it be anything other than you pool your resources and split the remainder?

Otherwise you are taking ALL the hit, career wise and financially?

I am the higher earner- more than twice DHs salary. We put all our money into a joint account and split what remains after bills after we had a child.
As the higher earner I essentially supported myself on maternity leave. However I recognise that I would not be able to do my high earning role without the support of my DH- he makes sure I have a meal when I come home late at night and deals with the day to day running of the house so I always feel like because he helped me to earn my wage then it’s also his. I assume you support your husband in similar ways in which case you shouldn’t really be thinking about ‘his’ money and ‘your’ money

You're having his baby, why should you suffer financially? I find it so weird now married couples with children keep separate finances. How strange that you wouldn't discuss this with your partner before you tried for a baby?

Well, he can either support you (as happens in most families) or he can pay you half the cost of a full-time nanny (which would be around £1300 round here) plus overtime whenever he's out at the weekend or late home from work and you end up covering his share of the childcare.

I had a joint account, all money was family money. It worked for over 20 years (money wasn't the cause of our split and we still share expenditures without court orders or mediation)

I’m on mat leave and on the last three months where I’m not getting paid at all. We have a joint account, sufficient provision and at no point have we discussed what “his” and “mine” it’s ours. Like the baby it’s ours!

I agree with this!

If he objects to supporting you while you care your (plural, as it's his too) child, he's a piece of shit.

You are now a family, and your contributions will need to be fair. One might do more in the house while the other earns more, but neither of you should be scraping by due to having to work less to care for your baby.

I'm astonished the conversation didn't happen before you started trying for a baby though.

My DP will not be supporting me but purely because he can't afford to and I earn far more so have been lucky enough to be able to save in the run-up.

However, if it was possible he 100% would. As everyone has said, it's not just your responsibility.

In your shoes, I'd be saying we needed to look at nurseries as you didn't realise how tight money would be for you. Neither of you want that so chances are he will offer a solution. It would be good if he would take over your share of the bills while you're off so you don't have to worry about those.

Yes. What you earn and what he earns is irrelevant. It is household income. You both should have the same disposable income, regardless of whether one spouse earns ten times what the other does.

All earnings including bonuses and overtime should go into one joint account, and you should withdraw an equal amount for personal spending and saving. If one person gets a pay rise, you both get a pay rise and vice versa.

So many women see the children as “their” expense. A few of my friend buy all the kids clothes and food etc and feel they have to ask if they’re short, where their partners are spending their disposable income on their hobbies. I find it utterly bizarre. In fact one friend who has this arrangement got a pay rise so her DH puts less in their joint bills account, despite the fact he’s never bought a stitch of clothing for his kids and she’s always in a deficit where he’s pretty comfortable and indulges in expensive hobbies.

Every times I see this question asked my heart sinks that so many women think they might be unreasonable to expect financial support from their partner in this situation. Why are we bringing up girls to think that their career sacrifices and contributions to child rearing should all come at a financial loss to themselves? It's bad enough that women still done have parity in most occupations in terms of pay or representation, but that so many still wonder if they should reasonably expect their partner to cover more bills while they earn less in order raise children?! Utterly depressing.

Yes

All our money went into a joint account, from which came ALL household spend (including baby).
An amount was transferred into each of our sole accounts as individual spending money.

It’s a discussion I’ve started to have with my DP. We’re going to TTC this year.

We’re not married, but have been together 11 years and own a home together. We both earn a similar amount.

At the moment we both contribute the same amount into a joint account where our mortgage and bills come out of. If we have a joint spend we move money around. Save a chunk each. And have a smaller amount we can spend without discussion.

I think our plan during M leave is for both of our incomes to go into the joint account, and then we take a small bit out for ourselves each month and then we can decide at the end of each month if we have any left to put into savings.

I am really concerned that you're pregnant and haven't discussed this with your husband and are contemplating selling your car.

Are you scared of him?

Do husbands tend to support their wives financially during mat leave?

This is just a horrible way to put the question, so I really hope it isn't coming from your DH.

But if it is, could you look at it this way?

He's supporting you in having your baby - he's earning family income because you can't.

You're supporting him in having your baby - you're conceiving, bearing, labouring & feeding a baby because he can't.

Of course he should support you, bloody hell. What kind of pathetic excuse for a man wouldn’t?! What, is he going to leave you buying your groceries in Lidl while he stocks up at Waitrose? Waiting in the pouring rain for a bus while he whizzes off in his shiny car? Any man who wouldn’t support his partner and the mother of his child at this time is a bastard, frankly. Children are expensive, you take that hit as a family.

Despite being married, we've always had our salaries paid into our own accounts and then put money in the joint account to cover household bills, mortgage etc. We currently take home similar amounts, but when we didn't we adjusted the amounts that went into the joint account, so both had the same amount left over each month. It's always worked for us so no reason to change.

Now that I'm expecting our first baby, we both recognise this now needs to change! Both our incomes will go into the joint account, and we'll take out what we need to cover our personal bills (phone contracts etc), but the rest will be family money. This will be the same for the months I'm earning enhanced maternity pay and on SMP. We're also doing shared parental leave, and the same will apply when I'm back at work and my husband is on SPP.