Worrying about surviving on maternity allowance

[esgill]

I am self-employed. I have a small business and last year earnt around £16.5k (fledgling year). I am getting maternity allowance from September, when my baby will be born, it says I can't work or would face prosecution/have the money taken back.

What I can't find out: are freelancers entitled to the same 10 staying-in-contact days a month? I want to at least be able to sustain what I have started, though will have a lot less time for it with the baby. I am also not convinced I'll be able to pay my side of the rent and bills with £178 a week!

The nature of my work is also a little unusual – I do work that feels unpaid for 2-3 months at a time, and then get paid in arrears because of invoice lag times. I expect to be paid for work done in July and August in September and October.

Keeping in touch days aren't 10 per month, it's 10 over your whole leave. Might you be entitled to UC as well? As for paying your 'half' of the rent, is your partner not going to put in a bit more financially as you will be the one caring for baby??

My husband is also a freelancer and our plan was to share everything: the workload, parenting etc. But it sounds like I might not be allowed to do that/we might need to take on more traditional roles if I am to get funding?

10 over the whole leave isn't much! Do you know if this applies to maternity allowance too? Or just leave?

Hi @esgill I am in an identical situation to you. I’m struggling to find info too and considering calling citizens advice or similar?!
My partner also self employed and we’re realising maternity allowance won’t touch the sides. Will update if I hear of anything useful.
when are you due?

The 10 KIT days apply to MA too.

Thanks for the responses, are you allowed to earn money on the 10 KIT days? Tempted to pass my small business to my husband for a year.

@Whippetmother sorry to hear it's not just me! I'm due at the end of September. How about you?

I emailed the charity Pregnant then Screwed for info https://pregnantthenscrewed.com

Will let you know when i hear back. Maybe you can contact them too?

Nope you don't get KIT days when self employed. Or didn't a few years ago when I had this problem. I had to go back to work fast after I had my first. Was single for my second so benefits topped it up but by the time maternity was over most of my work was gone it was like starting again

You absolutely do get KIT days when SE. When I had my first, I was running my own business and used my 10 KIT days for paid work. That was 2019.

In reality, they can't really 'know' how much you are working, but obviously if you are earning a lot of money while on MA then that is a red flag. But I wasn't strict about sticking to 10 discrete days, as the nature of SE is that you often are having to do some bits more little and often, but more to an overall amount of time that I felt was equivalent to 10 working days. Don't take the piss essentially.

And outside of the KIT days you cannot do paid work on MA. If you have something generating income in the background while you're off that's fine, however.

If you work for an employer and get SMP then you can do self-employed work without losing entitlement to your SMP. Which is a bit crap, but it's to do with how they class the benefit. MA is classed as a government benefit whereas SMP is from the employer (even though they get most of it back).

https://maternityaction.org.uk/advice/maternity-and-parental-rights-for-self-employed-parents/

This explains it all. Strictly any work on a KIT day, no matter how small, counts as a whole day. I took the view that was unnecessarily punitive and didn't class replying to a client email or something as a KIT day and felt that I was following the spirit of the agreement well enough, but you can see the actual 'rules' in that link.

@Hugasauras thank you, this is very useful to know.

So a few questions I have re "If you have something generating income in the background while you're off that's fine, however.":

-Can I get paid royalties for books?
-If I invoice for work done in summer and it's not paid until after the baby is due, in autumn, will I lose my MA?
-I am making a product this summer. I intend to sell it via pre-orders in August and September (wholesale to shops and to individuals) but I will passively likely earn money from the product over the coming months. Would this be an issue?
-What about grant money/awards etc?

Basically, I own a small business but also write columns for magazines and I'm working on a book. I can probably make it so I only take in earnings/do the paid work (writing my column, invoicing shops for wholesale orders) for these one day a month. Agreed though with this: "I took the view that was unnecessarily punitive and didn't class replying to a client email or something as a KIT day." I wonder if replying to my agent would really count as work when it's not something I am getting paid for...

Royalties are fine - anything you've already done the work for that is generating income is fine, so a product you are selling that you've created before MA is fine (or if you use a KIT to create it and then sell it, that's also fine). It's the physical act of being engaged in work. You also won't lose MA for invoices being paid after work has been completed either, whenever they are paid. That's all fine.

The thing is, it's self-reporting. No one is scrutisnising what you are doing day to day when you are on MA. If you were subject to an HMRC investigation at any point, they might notice if you had earned your usual income or more but had claimed MA for 9 months, and they might want evidence of where it's come from in that case, but you are unlikely to face any issues as long as you are sensible and act in good faith. So don't carry on business as usual and also claim MA, but I wouldn't be fretting too much about being forensic about hours spent. Obviously that's my own personal experience and risk levels.

Joining in here because I face the same dilemma…i want to have a baby but I’m self employed and I’m not sure how to actually survive (career wise and financially)

@esgill great call contacting pregnant then screwed! Will contact them too.

Also really great advice from others here (thanks for letting me coattail). I’m due jan 24 so have a little bit of time to work it out but not much!

It’s such a bad deal isn’t it. Hopefully there is something you can do! I started up my own business last time while on maternity leave from my full time job so was lucky I was allowed to work self employed while receiving statutory maternity pay from my job. It’ll be the same this time again. Last time I worked from when my baby was 2/3 months as I couldn’t survive when the money dropped to smp. It then dropped to nothing when my baby was 8/9 months. This time I’m going to have to do the same again. Hoping to hand in my notice at work after maternity leave so really don’t want my business to flop during that time! Our costs in the house have gone up massively so to even be able to cover our bills and food we pretty much need two full time wages all the time. As nice as it would be for my husband to cover it all while I have an actual maternity leave it just isn’t possible 😢 I used to go to baby classes and be running out the door as soon as they finished to get work done in time while lots of the other mums were going for coffee. I could never understand how anyone was able to afford it though but I guess some people must have very different set ups to mine

Did you find out if you were eligible to anything else other than MA? I’m self employed and so is my husband I’m due to get MA in a few months and was wondering if we would be entitled to anything else like UC?