Shared Parental Leave

[scotscorner]

Hi, looking for advice from someone who understands shared parental leave! First time pregnant lady trying to navigate family policies.

Both my and my husband’s organisations facilitate shared parental leave. My simple understanding is ShPL allows you to share maternity leave and pay between parents.

Under my company policy, I am entitled to 18 weeks full pay, followed by 21 weeks statutory maternity pay, and thereafter nothing (until 52 weeks elapsed). He is entitled only to 2 weeks paternity leave (if not taking ShPL).

I happen to have a significantly higher salary than DH. In an ideal world, we’d love to take time off together at the beginning, say first 3 months, if we can afford it.

My question is this: with ShPL, would the situation typically be:
a) my 18 weeks of pay is ‘shared’ between the partners (i.e. 9 weeks of both of us on full salary from respective organisations, thereafter sharing statutory maternity pay) or

b) would he get some of my unpaid leave while I get my salary for 18 weeks? or

c) something else?

Scenario A would be seriously financial disadvantageous to us as we would ‘lose’ 9 weeks of my salary…

Thanks in advance!

It’s not A. Your enhanced pay is your benefit as an employee. He can’t tap into it.

I’m finding SPL a nightmare to navigate, so I’m afraid I don’t know if his leave will come from your stat paid weeks or unpaid weeks. The theory is you can “share” E.g pass over any unused entitlement. If you’re only taking 18 weeks there will be enough paid weeks left for him to take. But if you were planning to take a chunk of time on stat pay it eats into what is left to transfer to him.

Hi OP, me and my husband are doing SPL.
My company gives me full pay for 26 weeks, Stat Mat pay for 13 weeks then unpaid for anything further. Because I'm the higher earner he'll be taking his SPL during the unpaid portion when I'm technically back at work (I'll be tagging annual leave after stat mat mat pay).

This works for us because DD is ebf so he'll have more time with her when she's not reliant on me for food 🤣.

Good luck with whatever you decide.

In theory you can share the paid 37 weeks how you like. However any enhanced pay is company specific. So if you get enhanced maternity pay from your employer, he can't tap into it because he is not their employee.

If he gets enhanced shared parental leave pay from his company then he needs to find out how it is counted. It can be counted from when the baby is born or it just has to taken anytime between weeks 2 to 39. Some companies allow an overlap but it means reduced time off, including unpaid, with the baby. (There are companies who are outliers to this who give x time paid in the first year.)

My DP's employer stipulated it had to be taken between weeks 2 - 39 but we never got their clear policy until about 2 days before I was induced. He got his full pay for 18 weeks plus 2 weeks full pay for paternity leave while I just got SMP. With his holiday actual took more time off than me in our baby's first year.

I’m have no idea of shared parental leave works but do you have a HR department where you work? They likely have someone there who deals with this on a regular basis. When I was planning my mat leave and deciding how to spread my pay…. they were able to send me 2 seperate spreadsheets of option A and option B and how much I’d receive each month etc to help me decide what was best etc x

I did SPL. I took 6 months fully paid, as this is what my employer offered, and then 3 months on SMP and 1 month unpaid. My husband took 2 months unpaid. We could have done it differently but it didn't make sense for him to take any leave until after my 6 months fully paid leave had expired. He could have taken unpaid parental leave after his paternity leave to have more time at home but in the end he took a couple of weeks holiday after paternity leave so we had the first month together.

I don't understand SPL particularly well but someone I work with is planning to take 2 months at the same time as his partner. This has been approved by our HR department but there was a bit of back and forth clarifying it.
I'm planning to have 9 months then DH the last 3 months.

Thanks so much all for the replies!

my biggest concern is the sharing of the 18 weeks full pay - sounds like from @Moancup and @RedWingBoots that this wouldn’t be the case given it’s my employee benefit and not shareable (which if correct is brilliant news).

of course I will check with HR and thanks @Jaaxe for your tips too ;) I just wanted to get an idea before I start discussing with them.

This article seems to explain it quite well. You can both be off at the same time, your partner would get statutory or unpaid depending on how you split it and obviously you'd be using the year between you so you would both have to go back when baby is less than one year old.

My husband and I are sharing leave but he'll take 3/4 months at the end, I don't want to put baby into nursery when they are too young so we'll take it one after the other

workingfamilies.org.uk/articles/shared-parental-leave-sharing-leave-with-a-partner-or-splitting-up-leave/

We've just had our first employee use shared parental leave.

It's Option B. If your dh's employer offers any enhanced shpp to fathers, he may get some pay, otherwise it would reduce the number of unpaid weeks you can take off.

Following this thread because I've been struggling to understand shared parental leave too.
Here's my understanding and dilemma:
To start shared parental leave, the woman has to officially stop her maternity leave.
The additional weeks my company offers at full pay are part of supplementary maternity pay.
If I stop my maternity leave to move onto shared parental leave, does that mean I lose the right to my supplementary maternity pay?

I appreciate i likely need to ask my company but not currently pregnant and don't want to show my hand

To share leave you have to give notice to end your leave early (you can be off together or separately but need to give notice that your leave will end in order to free up time for your dh). You can stay on maternity pay rather than move to shared pay to take advantage of your enhanced pay. It depends how long your dh wants to take off as to when your leave/pay period ends.

Zoe, I was worried about that for my employee (enhanced mat leave policy but statutory shared parental).
We got advice that said the mother can be on maternity leave while the father is on shared parental. The mother does end maternity leave early to create the shared parental, but it ends at a future date so she can stay on the enhanced maternity leave until then.
Workingfamililies website was helpful for giving some scenarios and is clear that the mother can be on maternity leave at same time Father is on shared parental.

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

@justanotherlaura I really like this article too.

So I guess the key points are
• the pay and leave can be shared however the parents choose (so can “give him” unpaid leave even if I still have statutory paid leave remaining)
• mum can be on mat leave while dad is on SPL (which I still don’t fully understand!)
• hopefully my enhanced company pay for 18 weeks remains mine regardless

Will speak to HR & try to get a spreadsheet! :)

I'm in nhs and would have had to end mat leave to start parental leave which is only paid at statutory maternity pay. So I'd lose all enhanced pay. I could have shared the unpaid bit at the end of mat leave but we couldn't afford for my husband to be unpaid as he is the breadwinner by far.

The best way to work it out is to do a table with 5 columns
Column 1 week Number e.g. 1
Column 2 Mothers ML or ShPL
Column 3 Mothers SMP or SShPP
Column 4 Fathers Paternity Leave/ShPL
Column 5 Fathers SPP/SShPP

In columns 2 and 4 allocate the 2 weeks Paternity Leave(PL) , 52 weeks Maternity Leave/SPL
In columns 3 and 5 allocate the 2 weeks SPP and compulsory 2 weeks SMP. Then play about with the 50 weeks SMP/SShPP

To make it easier you could add in 2 further columns for Occupational Maternity Pay (OMP) and occupational Shared Parental Pay (OShPP).

1. You cannot share your occupational pay
2. Occupational pay must be taken at the same time as SMP/SShPP
3. There is no reason some or all of the 21 weeks you get paid SMP/SShPP only cannot be taken by your DH immediately after his 2 weeks Paternity Leave.
4. You opt out of SML/SMP and into SShPL/SShPP after your 18 weeks OMP.
5. Run the spreadsheet past HR or ask them if they have one first.