Shared parental leave

[Decemberbaby2020]

I am in the process of applying for maternity leave / SPL. I would like 6 months maternity leave followed by the rest for my husband as SPL.

Finding the application process confusing! Anyone who’s done this before...did you apply for maternity leave first and then give notice of curtailment of maternity leave / SPL form 8 weeks prior to SPL?
HR seem to think I should hand in SPL form instead of maternity leave form from the beginning. The form doesn’t seem to read like this?

Thanks,
Sally

Hi Sally, yes the process is so confusing!! It was a few years ago for me now so the details are hazy but you are right - you want to take 6 months of mat leave before the spl comes into effect so you need to apply for mat leave in the usual way. I applied for both at pretty much the same time but the spl form is definitely not a replacement for the mat leave request, you need both if you are applying for both. Hope I've understood your question ok!

We've just handed in our forms and are waiting to hear how badly we've messed them up! It's so complicated.

I filled out all the mat leave, curtailment and SPL forms at the same time as I knew when I'd need to curtail (after 12 weeks but we actually built in a buffer of a few weeks in case baby comes late so that we don't need to re-notify work). My partner is only taking 4 weeks though so we had some wriggle room on the dates, but his employer needed to know now if he was taking any time off.

I had to hand in the mat leave form as my employer only enhances mat pay, not shared parental, so I couldn't take SPL from the outset. Yours might be different though?

No you still take maternity. Give them notice that you are curtailing it now and hand in the shared form for your partner. It's important you stay as maternity as your rights will be different if you too shared parental instead.

It's super confusing!

As PP have said, you have to apply for both maternity and SPL. All women must take a mandatory two weeks (I think) or six weeks (if a factory worker) so your work are talking nonsense.

I did 6 months mat, two months SPL and my husband did four months SPL. We did some of our SPL as overlapping and some separately. Was worth the faff with the forms!