Become pregnant while on sick leave

[happyvivian181]

Hi all, please help me out here, I don't know what to do right now.

I work for this large corporation for 3 years until last year when my new manager joined company. There are about 25 people in my team, I am the only one who is married with a child. The rest of the team are either men or single woman in their 40's who has no children or family, basically they are career driven. My new manager made public speech in the office about how much she hated children and she refer children as ' disease'. She then ignore me during departmental meetings(not mentioning my naming when introducing the whole team to others'.) One week she told (shouted) at me Not to do one thing and following week she shouted at me again for not doing it. One day she even told it's time to go and have my second baby. The list going on and on, it got so bad I had several panic attack and undergo all kinds of heart investigation because I consistently having breathing difficulties.

I was diagnosed with working related stress and depression since last November and I have been receiving consulting treatment.My therapist suggested unless I have a closure to the whole thing my life won't be able to move on. So I went out for interview and I managed to secure a very good job with another massive firm, they offered me a middle management role which is one level higher than my current role. I received offer last week and I scheduled a meeting with my current employee HR about the exiting plan next Monday.

But this morning I found out that I am pregnant. I am very surprised but we are also very happy as our son is 26 months now, like my bully manager said 'it is time for us to have another baby'. My question for the HR expert or even moms is that what should I do and what sort of benefit will I be entitle to?

Option 1 : Stay with current company either staying on sick leave until birth, then leave the company after maternity leave

Question: What sort of maternity pay will I get? Will that be a company enhanced one or just the basic SMP pay while on long term sickness.

Option 2 : Stay with current company but changing to a different department ( Not sure if it's possible/available yet)
If I do that, suppose I will have all the benefit anyway.

Option 3 : Leave current company and move to the new company. I already checked the new company policy that I have to start working for them 41 weeks before due date in order to get company maternity pay. Otherwise I will be entitle to SMP if my due date is 26 weeks after my starting date.

Question: If I do decided to take on Option 3, shall I tell them about my pregnancy before accepting the offer? Will be withdraw their offer if they find out I am pregnant. Or they can simply fire me after 3 months of probation? The end of the day, my new job is going to be a very demanding role, requires lots of business travel and business meetings.

What will you do if you were me as an HR or as a mother? Help please.

I can't imagine from what you say that Option 1 is a good idea for you, and even if Option 2 were available, is it really worth turning down the opportunity you've been offered?

If you stay with your current employer you will need to check their maternity policy. if they have enhanced maternity pay the policy should outline what the terms and conditions of that are.

I'd go for Option 3 myself, and think long-term. If the company's maternity policy says you'll be entitled to SMP if you've been employed for 26 weeks by your due date that is wrong. You qualify for SMP if you've been continuously employed for 26 weeks by your qualifying week, which is 15 weeks before your due date. So basically, as you are pregnant already, you won't qualify. You will probably qualify for maternity allowance from the government though, which is the same as SMP only without the first 6 weeks at 90% of salary.

The new employer are not allowed to withdraw an offer because of pregnancy. Yes they could dismiss you later on, but it would be incredibly risky to do so, so unless they had very solid evidence that you were not performing, and could therefore easily demonstrate that your pregnancy had nothing to do with the decision, it's unlikely they'd do that.

If you've only just found out you are pregnant, it's probably early days, so I wouldn't rush to say anything to the new employer. It won't make any difference to them whether they know right now or once you've started, so I'd leave it for the moment.