Shared parental leave - anyone with experience?

[JNGO21]

Hello,

I'm currently 36 weeks pregnant and about to go on leave (Woo!) My husband's employer have just upped their parental leave policy which means it'll make sense to share our leave, which is amazing!

I've been reading all the policies, reading the info on gov.uk and I'm still unsure about 1 thing...
It says we can share 50 weeks leave and up to 37 weeks of pay. Is that statutory pay only or do our respective workplaces' enhanced policies override that?
Our plan is:
I start leave on the 8th July for 26 weeks (12 weeks full pay, 14 weeks Stat)
Husband takes 4 weeks when baby is born, then 22 weeks once I've gone back (all at 90% pay).
That's 52 weeks leave and 52 weeks pay, but only 14 weeks is statutory pay. Is that fine or is there 15 weeks that wont be paid?

Can anyone who has used shared parental leave shed any light on this?

Thank you :)

We used the governments shared parental leave last year, they pay for 37 weeks, but to do that you have to give up some of yours so your partner can take it, its paid at £156.66 a week. For example I gave up 10 of my weeks so that my husband could have 10 weeks, leaving me with 27 weeks pay and leave. We had the time off together at the same time. Hope this helps.

SPL is the most confusing thing ever, I’m not surprised more people don’t take it!

Your workplace pay overrides anything stat as it’s enhanced pay so go by that. My husband and I had a spreadsheet for working out ours, I’d recommend you do that then get both your employers to double check that it looks right and you’ll both be paid as expected

The 37 weeks applies to the statutory pay.

Can’t comment on the enhanced pay without reading the policies.

We did similar but you don't both get full pay. Think of it as the full pay bit follows the baby not the employee. So I took 7 months (6months full pay plus 1 month statutory). DH then took 5 months, 2 of which he got statutory for and the rest were unpaid. DH could have taken 6 months paid but then I wouldn't have been paid for the 6 months and it's the first 6 months when I was recovering and needed to be off work more than him.

It's really complicated and my work didn't want to help much (think it was my manager actually). Didn't bother the second time as it was just a farce. Second time I took slightly longer longer and DH took some unpaid leave when I went back to work so we had a similar outcome but without having to get my manager to agree it.

Also check your both eligible my colleague was livid when he couldn't do it because his GF was a phd student and so didn't count as employed.

@cupofdecaf that doesn’t seem right, what’s the point in having enhanced SPL policies if people can’t take them? How come your husband couldn’t take his paid portion?

As PP have said, you'll have to confirm with your HR departments exactly how it works as the company policy will determine how much you get in addition to statutory pay. Saying that, I'd be surprised if your husband's company would pay him to take the second half of the leave: generally how it's worked out that I've seen in the past is that if he is taking weeks 27-52, that would be paid as weeks 27-52 not weeks 1-26 (IE if the company offers 26 weeks of paid parental leave, then statutory for the next 26, he would get statutory as he's taking the latter half). But there's no fixed way to do it and it will entirely depend on their policy.

So we were both entitled to 6months paid (if we'd each had our own baby) but you can't both take it as paid. Shared is the key word. You can share your maturity allowance.
So we were entitled to 6 months paid, 3 months stat and 3 months unpaid.

Interesting point is that the mum has to sign to agree to share the maternity leave with the dad. It's mums maternity leave but she can share some of that with dad and gives him the same protection against redundancy etc.
there's only 1 maternity leave basically, you can't both have your 6 months off paid unless both your jobs give 12 months paid leave which I've never heard of in the UK.

I started my mat leave today (no sign of baby yet) and will be able to take my enhanced pay and then go on to statutory. My husband’s employer have confirmed when he starts his SPL he will be able to take his enhanced pay, although we weren’t expecting this. He will then go back on to statutory and then the unpaid part. You can still have the full year off, you must have at least 2 weeks of maternity and then you can share up to 50 weeks SPL.

Agree with @ShirleyPhallus it is so unnecessarily complicated. We also did a spreadsheet and checked with both employers but in a nutshell anything enhanced by them will override statutory. Good luck!

That’s interesting, as when we took ours we were both allowed to take our paid bit because it was enhanced by the employer. So I took 9 months then my husband took 3, part of mine was stat but my husband’s was fully paid even though he took months 9-12.

Thanks for all your replies! Quite a difference. Seems it completely dependent on our workplaces. We have both contacted our HR departments but nobody seems to understand it there either!

@ShirleyPhallus I'm really hoping this is how ours will work. I have about 10 different scenario spreadsheets currently in operation... I'll send the best case to HR and just hope they agree!

Whatever happens, his new policy is 100x better so we'll be better off regardless. Just need to figure out when we will/wont get paid!

It varies by employer. At my workplace you recieve six months full pay, at my husbands eight months (which can be split). The leave essentially belongs to the child.

I took six months off on full pay, my husband during that time took six weeks off, two as paternity leave and four as unpaid leave. He is now on parental leave, the first two months are paid in full (as they’re month 7 and 8), it then goes down to statutory.