Do you understand shared parental leave?

[caerdydd12]

Because I thought I did. I'm now not so sure.

I'm due March 2024 and plan to take the entire 39 weeks. At the end of those 39 weeks I'm hoping to take the entirety of my 2024 annual leave allowance, tagged on the end of maternity leave basically. (As long as work allow it).

What we'd like to do is after 39 weeks mat leave, and during the month when I'm on annual leave, is have my partner take shared parental leave for a month. I understand that it would be unpaid, I'm just trying to understand if it's allowed because the rules say maternity leave must have ended and return to work but although maternity leave will have ended I'd still be off on annual leave. Does this matter?

Can anyone let me know of any obvious reasons why this wouldn't be within the rules of shared parental leave?

Please and thank you, of course.

You can take shared parental leave while on maternity leave. My husband took 4 weeks. It will come off your maternity leave though. Essentially as a couple you’re entitled to claim 41 weeks plus 13 weeks unpaid. Usually this is 39 weeks for the mother and 2 for the father. If your husband takes 4 you will only be able to take 37.

thats my understanding anyway. My employers did it wrong when we took it and they gave me 2 extra weeks but couldn’t claim the statutory back from the government

We did this! I can’t remember the exact dates but I “returned to work” when my little one was about 10 months and my partner took the remaining weeks of the 50 weeks allowance (he’d already had 2 weeks paternity leave when baby was born) of shared patently leave. Although I was technically back at work I took 6 weeks of annual leave straight away so we were off together and I didn’t actually start work again until after that.

Doesn’t matter that you’re on annual leave, you’re still back at work and not taking parental leave which is all that counts for those purposes.

Thank you!

Thank you, this is exactly what we're hoping to do. When do you ever get the chance to have a month off together basically!

You can actually both be off on shared parental at the same time. You MUST take the first two weeks as maternity, but after that you can switch onto shared parental for the remaining 37 weeks. Then your partner can take it from week 40 onwards unpaid.

Check your employers policy though as you don’t want to switch off maternity if it ruins your enhanced maternity pay (it shouldn’t but best to check!).

But if you wanted to overlap parental leave, provided combined you only take 37 paid weeks and 13 unpaid weeks then you can do what you like!

Thank you!

Also just to mention get your partner to check his contract under the Shared Parental Leave section. It can be a few pages on from the Paternity Leave section. My company gives the same full paid leave for men and women (six months), and my partners company gave him five months full pay. Out of my antenatal group, a lot did shared parental leave and the men had a portion of it on full pay.

Some of it has to be taken at certain times (depending on the contract), but we also overlapped it for two months and went travelling.

I wish this was the case! My partner works for a small business where it's statutory paternity pay and that's it. Nothing enhanced unfortunately.