Maternity Allowance and Shared Parental Pay

[vibst]

Hi, my wife wants to curtail Maternity Allowance (MA) payment period to 17 weeks to create 22 weeks of Shared Parental Pay (ShPP) for myself. The wife is qualified for MA but disallowed to get payments for 17 weeks as she is in abroad (india) during the 17 weeks period and will only be able to start actual payments of MA payment period once she confirm the returns to DWP by providing boarding pass and visa stamp.

Q. Is ShPP only gets triggered after curtailment of Active MA payments or it can be triggered after curtailment of MA payment period ?
Q. Whether i as a partner (father) eligible to apply for ShPP, if my wife curtail the MA payment period even she did not get actually paid for it?

Q. Another scenario, suppose my wife curtails the MA payment period after coming back to UK and her actual MA payment is started, how much ShPP is created if she curtails the MA now ? Lets say, she comes in 22nd week of MA payment period and receive 2 week of actual MA payments and then curtails it, how much ShPP is available afterwards for partner ?
Is it 39-2 = 37 or 39-24 (22 unpaid, 2 paid) ?

Note: my employer policy says that mother will need to curtail or ends Maternity allowance in order to give me ShPP.

Could you please clarify my above doubts, it will be very helpful and what is actual guidance from HMRC as we do not want that in future, HMRC asks us to pay back the ShPP payments as she did not get actually get paid while she was on MA payment period. Thank you.

I would phone the maternity allowance people. You'll be on hold for over an hour but when you finally get through they are pretty helpful.

If your wife is only entitled to MA (not SMP) then are you sure you are entitled to Shared Parental Leave/Pay? I don't think so but your circumstances are quite complex.

Here is the info I found which agrees with my thoughts:
www.citizensadvice.org.uk/work/maternity-and-parental-rights/check-your-maternity-and-parental-rights/parental-rights/parental-rights-at-work/#h-shared-parental-leave

You should perhaps speak to an expert as your situation is complicated.

If she is abroad for 17 weeks, where is the baby?

Just to note that you can be paid ShPP at the same time as the mum gets maternity pay if the mum has agreed to end her leave early in advance. Unsure how this changes for maternity allowance.