Shared Parental Leave

[luke84]

Hi,

Sorry, new here. Just found out my wife is expecting and we have no experience of pregnancy so thought I would approach people on here to find out your experiences of shared parental leave and how it works.

So it looks like where my wife works they just give the basic when it comes to maternity leave. She gets 6 weeks at 90% of her salary and after that she can get the SMP for the next 33 weeks.

My work seems to be a little more generous. I can take 24 weeks full pay under shared parental leave.

Our initial idea without any knowledge on this subject is my wife goes on maternity for 6-9 months and then I take the rest of the time for baby bonding and also financial reasons.

Does this make sense to do it this way? Has anyone used shared parental leave?

Thanks in advance.

Luke

You may want to check the period you will get full pay for. So if you don't take leave until week 26 onwards (when baby is 6 months old) you won't get full pay. This will be dependent on your company policy.

I haven't been able to use it as we just missed the cut off with our first baby. Hoping my husband will be able to take advantage of it this time around although he only get paid the statuary amount.

leghairdontcare, that's a good shout. I didn't even think of that! It probably makes sense that the 24 weeks follows the standard 2 weeks. Damn. I'll check with my HR.

If she takes the "paid for" time, regardless of how much she is paid, you can't then take paid for time. So if she takes 24 weeks at smp it will count as your leave being used up by her.

You could both take 6m off together, you at half rate, and her at half rate (as umderstand).

Either way, a quick chat with your hr and a read through the work policies may clear up.