Help with understanding shared maternity leave

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Im due to start my maternity leave next month and we are planning to split this between DH and I.

I currently get 18 weeks full pay followed by 21 weeks statutory maternity pay. However was looking to return after 32 weeks, January 2026 (so will have 7 weeks statutory leave unused). I was then going to use my annual leave between January and February to go back to work on a sort of phased return (2 or 3 days a week)

OH was going to start his paternity leave (the shared part of my maternity leave) at the end of February up until May 2026.

My question is will the 7 weeks of statutory pay that I don't use be transferred over to OH? Or does this all have to be taken as once?

I hope this makes sense!

TIA

Yes, your DH can take those 7 weeks, however you both need to talk to your employers and hope at least one of them has an hr department up to speed on shared parental leave. It's a wonderful thing to do but excessively complicated and confusing in its current setup.

Check your contracts at work. It’s often under a separate section to paternity leave and maternity leave. And I only mention this because my partner originally thought he got very little, but actually the shared leave provision was very generous. I’ve done shared leave twice with my partner. At his first company he got five months full pay (but paternity leave was four weeks full pay) and at his second company he got I think three months full pay. A lot of companies are equalling it to maternity leave. Different companies have different rules as to when you can take the full pay portion. My company made me take it all for the first six months that.
The stat pay can transfer over but had to be used in the first 9 months

The forms are annoying but also bear in mind KIT days - you get 20 with shared leave. You could use those also to phase back and save your annual leave for later / phase back for longer

Thank you for the replies. I will get OH to check both the maternity and paternity leave for his work. At the moment I know he gets 4 weeks paid paternity, which I thought was pretty decent as his old work he got one week.

@january1244im not sure he would get the 7 weeks statutory pay then if it has to be used in the 9 months? as this would be for the last 3 months he would be off.
I will need look into this

@january1244 oh I didn't know we could get 20? I get 10. I will definitely need to have a good look into all of this. Thanks!

He needs to check what shared parental leave/pay is offered by his employer. You can share up to 50 weeks leave and 37 weeks pay. Whatever leave and pay you dont take can be shared with him but it will be at whatever pay is offered by his employer, not yours.

https://maternityaction.org.uk/advice/shared-parental-leave-and-pay/

We took SPL, you need to look in detail at both your employers SPL policy. I was only on SMP/SShPP. DH works for the NHS and he was entitled to enhanced occupational pay to the extent that he was entitled to SShPP, but any maternity leave I took was deducted from his enhanced entitlement.
You are eligible for 10 days KIT days on MAT leave and 20 days each for SPLIT days.
What we did was:
me - 3 weeks maternity leave (1 before a and the 2 compulsory after birth). These 3 weeks were deducted from DH occupational SPL pay (I think it meant instead of 8 weeks full pay he got 5 weeks but can’t remember exactly).
I then converted me to SPL and I took I think about 9 weeks paid at stat rates (same stat rates as SMP so no difference to me but meant DH could then get the enhanced rate when he went on SPL). I then took 3 months of the unpaid parental leave (the bit you usually have at the end) and transferred my entitlement to statutory pay to DH.
DH then took 6 months off (starting in my month 5 so we had a month overlap in the middle), he got enhanced pay for it all,
some at full pay and some at half pay plus SShPP.
I did one SPLIT day a fortnight whilst I was off to keep a bit of money coming in.

It can be a bit of a nightmare, no one in NHS HR seemed to know the rules and the forms are overly complicated, but once we worked it out, it was great for us.

I’m not sure PP is correct saying you can’t take the statutory shared parental pay after 9 months as we did and a friend of mine has also since done the same. I’d check though incase the rules have changed since we did it or both our employers did it wrong!

Are you intending to go back to work, take some annual leave to make it part time and then DH starts his leave several weeks after you go back? Am I reading that wrongly? I'm pretty sure his leave needs to start immediately after yours ends.

I think you can get 20 plus your ten, but check with your HR.

This is how my HR applied the shared stat pay however it was confusing and I’m not sure if they got it totally right either. But it had to be chronological for the pay for those weeks https://www.acas.org.uk/shared-parental-leave-and-pay/shared-parental-pay