Maternity allowance if self employed - do I have to earn money for 26 weeks

[Bluesea14]

Hi all,
i currently work self employed jobs due to redundancy, im aware that ma is paid you are registered for 26 weeks and need to earn at least £30 for 13 weeks, but what about the other 13 weeks? I often have weeks were I'm unable to get any work so just trying to work out if I'd still be eligible, I think I am but wondered if anyone could confirm? Thanks

This is the eligibility criteria:

Eligibility
You can get Maternity Allowance for up to 39 weeks if you’ve been either:

• registered as self-employed for at least 26 weeks in the 66 weeks before your baby’s due

• employed for at least 26 weeks in the 66 weeks before your baby’s due

If you’ve been employed, you must have been earning (or classed as earning) £30 a week or more in at least 13 weeks of your employment.

The weeks do not have to be together.

You may still qualify if you’ve recently stopped working. It does not matter if you had different jobs or periods of unemployment.

This has a lot of info

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

The earnings don’t need to be every week but need to total at least the equivalent of the weekly earnings (so at least £39 x 13, which is £390, over the 26 weeks).

As MA is 90% of weekly earnings or £187.18 (whichever is lowest), they will calculate it based on average earnings. For example if you earn £200 for 10 of the weeks, £100 for 5 of the weeks and £0 for 11 of the weeks, you’ve earned £2,500 during the qualifying period (those 26 weeks), so they’d calculate your weekly earnings as £96.15 and your MA would be £86.53 per week.

If youre self employed its based on your Class 2 National Insurance contributions rather than the actual amount of money you've made. You need to have paid at least 13 weeks’ Class 2 National Insurance contributions in the 66 weeks before your expected week of childbirth to be eligible

The info is in the link I posted

@FluentTealGuide your calculation is for an employed person claiming MA. MA for a self employed person is calculated differently and is based on Class 2 NI contributions. If 13 weeks worth have been paid then OP would get the full amount of MA
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MA is paid for up to 39 weeks. You do not have to prove your actual earnings from self-employment when claiming Maternity Allowance. DWP will treat you as earning a certain amount based on whether or not you have paid at least 13 weeks’ Class 2 National Insurance (NI) contributions in your 66 week test period. If you are self-employed, the amount of MA you can get will be either £194.32 or £27 per week.

• if you have paid (or are treated as having paid) at least 13 weeks’ Class 2 NI contributions in your 66 week test period, you are treated as having earnings equal to the maximum amount of MA and will be entitled to MA of £194.32 per week (April 2026 – April 2027).

• if you have not paid (or are not treated as having paid) at least 13 weeks’ Class 2 NI contributions in your 66 week test period, you are treated as having earnings of £30 a week and you will be entitled to MA of £27 per week. You can send payslips from any other employed jobs to ‘top up’ your average earnings or you may be better off paying Class 2 NI contributions voluntarily to qualify for the full rate of MA, see below.

@dementedpixie Thanks for the clarification. You'd think I'd know that being self-employed and this not being my first rodeo 😅. Oops.

OP, sorry for the confusion.

I'll also mention that you may get a letter saying your NI contributions aren't enough and you qualify only for the lower amount, but don't worry, as you can voluntarily top-up your NI in order to qualify for the full amount. (I did this with my first.)

@dementedpixie that is v handy to know! so they'll just look at my class 2s and I'll get MA based on that? I was confused by the wording on the gov website about the eligable period as obvs income from self employment fluctuates but I earn somewhat steadily annually. I dont know why my mind hits a brick wall when trying to grasp these things when I enjoy complex ideas outside of tax stuff! (and sorry for jumping in here but was just filling in my form this morning but was unsure!)