Maternity Pay

[123FirstTimeMummy]

Can someone help me understand maternity pay - I'm so confused

From my understanding my I will get the following;

SMP @ 90% Of Pay for 6 weeks
SMP Normal Rate for 33 weeks

Anything after 33 weeks is unpaid? If I'm wanting to take 52 Weeks off I don't get any paid for 19 weeks?

I would absolutely 100% not even think about doing this. It's short term gain for long term pain. It will fuck with how long you have to repay, extra interest added on and not to mention if you need to sell.

If trying to sell after you've done this and with a baby your lending potential will be massively affected. It may also affect penalties if you are not able to port.

Terrible, terrible advice.

See if your employer does average equal pay over 12 months , so you can still get paid for the 12 months

Depends on the situation - in our case we had been overpaying for 5 years or so and have built up a buffer. We are allowed to underpay until that buffer is used up no questions asked 🤷🏽‍♀️

Edited to add: our mortgage rate is also under 2% and savings rate is over 4%. So no need to be so judgy!

Hi,
Just wanted to double check about the bank holiday part. If I am paid them but we don't work that day do I still accrue those days as well as normal annual leave?

I know only a couple of people who took a whole year. And I'm having my 3rd so know a lot of people who've had babies. I went back at 8 months, albeit part time with both my older ones, intend to do the same this time.
Personally I've had enough of maternity leave by that point anyway!

I can't even bare thinking about living off £800 compared to what my salary is! I will be going back to work around 6 months!

This is really helpful thank you!

Can you not get paid average maternity pay
after third month in back up to about £1800 after tax

@excitedmama2be basic statutory maternity pay is £800 ish a month. You only get more if your employer offers more.

Yea I’m just saying that if people are getting the 90% wage for so long and then it drops and gets topped up with maternity pay too , pay outs will still come out as low

if you do average equal pay , it’s your wages spread out over how many months topped up with maternity pay so some people can still be getting paid between months 9-12

But it won’t be £1800 on SMP

is that where you ask them to work it out and spread it across the month's evenly? Rather than having like two good months then 4 shit ones 🤣

Yea so I got 39 week forecast and a 52 forecast one

39 weeks was shitty first two months of about 1300 and then goes up to 1800
52 weeks averaged out about 1000 after tax for the last 3 months

You get enhanced pay. The OP doesn’t.

What did you ask your employer for? I work for quite a small family business and I'm not sure they've dealt with much maternity the last one was over ten years ago and it was one of the directors! Lol!

Ahhh my employer has no enhanced maternity scheme in place. Just the basic

So you should be able to work out what 90% of your weekly pay is, and then 33 weeks of SMP and divide by 12.

It is very rare for employers to pay more than 39 weeks though (for maternity and SPL combined). Your employer may be different but these instances are very rare as SPL doesn't normally generate any extra leave/pay.

@JC89 does your DH employer offer the 50% pay for a long period of time(in your example 3 months?) You have to give up some of your leave for him to ‘share’ and they won’t be able to claim the spl portion of it if you’ve already taken the statutory 39 weeks of pay.

It still doesn’t work like that if your employer ONLY offers statutory maternity pay - I literally got no wage while I was on maternity leave, only the smp if £165 per week (as it was then) there is no top up with maternity pay, that’s literally all you get paid in many many private sector jobs.

I am giving up 3 months of leave so he is entitled to that 3 months of shared parental leave. He won't be entitled to statutory pay but gets the additional payments (50% of his salary) from his employer for those 3 months.