Using my savings to fund maternity leave - what’s fair?

[maternitymoney1]

I’m looking for advice on managing finances during maternity leave please.

I’m pregnant and have just been made redundant, but once I’m on maternity I’ll be eligible for maternity allowance. My husband earns £6.4k take home each month. His outgoings including mortgage and bills are £3.5k, mine are £2.5k (he has 2 other children and pays maintenance).

He believes that whilst I’m on maternity leave he should contribute half of my mortgage/bills cost (£900) and I should use my savings for the rest. This would leave him with £2k left over each month whereas I would have a deficit of £1k before any other spending.

I have £20k more savings than him, so he thinks I should spend this first. I worry that when I return to work I’m likely to earn much less than him and I want access to the money I’ve saved.

He says there’s no such thing as ‘mine’ and ‘yours’ and that he will be happy to pay for more if I don’t have money to pay for things like holidays in the future - and I believe him. But he doesn’t actually want to combine finances.

What’s fair in this situation?

Although (or because?) we didn't do it that way, I've come to believe the only really fair way to manage money once you start having children together is to put all income into a joint pot, use that for bills, joint and child-related expenses and maybe some joint savings, and then give each person an equal amount of "personal spends/savings" from what's left. The only exceptions I'd make are if one person is genuinely not pulling their weight (e.g. not doing paid work when they could BUT not doing housework/ childcare instead either) OR if there are serious trust/money management issues, e.g. one person has a gambling habit/racked up big debts or something and can't be trusted with access to a joint account.

Certainly, it's not fair that he can access as much of the (supposedly) joint income as he wants (after bills) while you're on maternity having his kid, AND got to keep/spend all the money he earned before kids, while you have no income of your own, no access to the supposedly joint income, and are effectively being "taxed" on your pre-kids income to pay for looking after his child!
Savings from pre-kids is after all different to earnings post-kids - if you had separate money then and one chose to save while the other was spending then I think it's reasonable to keep what you saved! And you're also right that you may well end up earning less once you go back, either if you go part-time or due to missing out on opportunities/ development while on maternity, so again as you're taking the career hit, it's not fair that you should lose out on that either.

Appreciate you’re asking about maternity leave here OP but actually if you have been made redundant presumably you will not be working for a while?

Will he expect you to just use all your money ubtil
its run out? Given what you have said I would be careful about finances and support moving forward.

Thank you everyone for your input, it’s been really helpful - even the ones who disagreed with me!

Pleased to say that we have decided we will merge finances and share income, savings etc moving forward.

Lord only knows. I'm so thankful I repel them ✝️.

Maybe you should have thought about this before planning to have a baby. He earns a collosal amount and he isn't being fair at all.

Well done OP!! Going forward together with joint finances has worked for me and DH for the last 26 years!!

That’s a sensible outcome, great news.