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Original poster

Shared parental leave advice

4 replies

WAC1 · 07/12/2023 14:30

I'm finding this whole thing very confusing. I'd like to take off a year or so. I'm entitled to SMP so understand that I will have several months with zero income.

My husband would like to take a month, does that mean he has to take a month of my paid leave? Or he can take a month of my unpaid leave? If I wanted to take 12 months and he takes a month, do I then go back after 11 months?!

The SPL document from work is totally useless and confusing!

Would love to hear your experience if you did SPL? Thanks

OP posts:
Reugny · 07/12/2023 14:40

The first thing each of you need to look at your individual employer's policies on shared parental leave.

Why? Each employer has a different policies on what you are allowed to do. This is why it is so confusing.

Then you need to work out when you want your child's father to be off to look after your joint child, and whether you want him to look after your child on his own.

In our case we decided we were going to split the paid part of down the middle. This is because I was on SMP while my DP had enhanced pay. At the time DP could take his leave any time in our DD's first year. So I took the first part off and DP took the second part.

Other parents we knew from NCT who shared leave had the man take the leave off together with the mother. So the man took a month off work immediately after his paternity leave.

A couple of guys I worked with even though they only got statutory pay took months 6 to 9 off. So they took 2 - 3 months off while their child's mother went back to work.

Guys I worked with at a different company were allowed 6 fully paid months off during any point during their child's first year, so they disappeared off for months 1-6 while the mother was also off.

dementedpixie · 07/12/2023 14:48

There are 50 weeks of leave and 37 weeks of pay you can share. You need to commit to shorten your leave period to free up time for your dh to take. What he gets paid depends on his employers shared parental leave scheme

Original poster
WAC1 · 07/12/2023 19:02

Thank you!

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