Pregnant and will be a single mum :(

snoopkat

Hi everyone. i wondered if i could call on you for some advice.
My situation is as follows:

I am approx 7 weeks pregnant
I want to keep the baby although the father will not be around
I left my job about 2 weeks before i got pregnant and am currently not employed, BUT i have just been offered a job starting monday. The money is good and the people are lovely. Clearly I have not yet told them about the baby - its early days and i feel that due to my circumstances I need to be careful and i am of course worried about miscarriage...

I will most likely work until the month before birth, I know that my employers are not obliged to offer me any form of maternity pay or rights.

I will be living in a rented flat.

What will the government pay for and give me to live on??

I am worried that if I take the job when I finish work in 6 months I will be destitute.

Will they pay me housing benefit and for how long? Will i get maternity allowance and after that what would I get to live on? just the income support or is there some sort of family credit thing?

Sorry but this is all totally new to me.

Thanks for any advice! I am new on here but my lovely cousin thinks its the best site ever so thats good enough for me....

x

Katgoddess

There is a PDF file here on maternity pay and leave:

http://www.usdaw.org.uk/equality/resource_library/1057004175_7222.html

I'm sure there will be more experienced people around tomorrow with advice for you.

Good luck.

loopylass

If your not working you should get income support with that housing benefit and council tax benefit as your pregnant there is a maternity one off payment sorry dont know how much but my friend is a single parent so im just saying what she gets anyway when you have the baby you will get child benefit and i think a lone parent allowance im not sure about how much the benefits are and you can always go to your local C.A.B and they will be able to tell you exactly what you will be entitled to

Dora_the_Explorer_5

Congratulations, that's wonderful news. Have a look at the Sticky threads on this board, they contain lots of information which may be useful to you.

CIS

First of all, you may be entitled to tax credits now, as long asyour over 25yrs and work over 30hrs per week. Once the baby is born , you'll be entitled to tax credits, even if you aren't now.

Unless your current employer pays you their own rate of maternity pay (many employers pay 100% salary whilst on maternity), you'll get maternity allowance.

You can try and claim Housing and Council Tax Bennefit, but they will depend on your income and for HB, what your rent and property size is.

jcr16

i started a job when i was 13 weeks preg and i got maternity allowance. u need to talk to the job centre about it. it gets based on your last 66 weeks or work , and you need to have worked x amount of weeks out of the 66. or something like that. the max thay pay is just over £100 a week. not a huge amount , but god it helped us out so much. also u can apply for a sure start maternity grant which pay £500 for u and u don't have to pay it back. Other than that i don't have any more info. i have never been on any benefits so don't know how it works.

AGB863

Maternity Allowance (MA) is payable if you have worked for at least 26 weeks in the 66 weeks immediatelybefore to the expected week of confignment ( your due date). The 26 weeks do not need to have been consecutive.

The amount you will recieve is the lesser amount of either £108.85 or 90% of average weekly gross earnings and is paid for up to 26 weeks. During your employment your earnings must be at least to the MA threshold of £30 a week.

You can not make a claim for MA until week 26 of your pregnacy.

The money that get from MA is taken into account as income when claiming Income Support, Housing Benefit and Council Tax Benefit.

There is a £500 Sure Start Maternity Grant that is available fro wk 29 of your pregnancy. To claim this you need to claiming Income Support or be already getting Child Tax Credits (at an amount of above £10.45 per week).

If you can not make the claim because of not being on either IS or CTC do not worry you can claim it for up to 3 months after the birth of your baby once you have made a claim for IS or CTC

I hope this is of use to you

becks666

Hi snnopkat!

I was in the same boat as you a few years back, little boy now three and we managed just fine so try not to get too stressed out with it :}

Before the baby is born you may be entitled to maternity allowence, if not you will be entitled to income support. As mentioned before you can also apply for a maternity grant of £500 to help you buy things that the baby will need.

Your rent and council tax will be paid by the council and you will be entitled to income support and child tax credit once the baby is born. If you decide to go back to work you will be entitled to working familys tax credit as well to help with child care.

When I was on benefits I recieved-
£56 per week income support
£156 per month child tax credits
£68 per month child benefit
£10 child maintinece a week {you are allowed to keep the first £10 paid, the rest is taken by income support}

Plus all my rent and council tax was paid. It is not enough to have you living like a queen but enough to live on until such time as you feel able to go back to work and when and if you do there is loads of help avalible if you see a loan parent advisor at the job centre.

I hope this sets your mind at rest a bit more. Try not to get too worried about things as my one regret is not being able to enjoy my pregnancy because i was so streesed out with worrying about money.

Good luck and congrats, its a fantastic thing having a baby don't let anything spoil it!

Becks x

black-saturn

I'm a single mum too and also proud of it although I was in a steady (or so I thought) relationship when I had my 2 children.

There are lots of leaflets available at the post office about benefits and theres also a leaflet called 'Bringing Up Children' which gives you a timetable of when to apply for each benefit.

I think it might be a wise idea to tell your employer that you are expecting. You may not be able to hide it long and you may feel ill with it too and need to dash to the loo now and again.

Take no notice of what SOME people say about lone parents on this board. Apparantly we all got pregnant deliberately so we could get a free house and sponge off the state for the rest of our lives according to them. That is not the case with all lone parents and none of us did it deliberately.

bluenose1

snoopkat wrote:

I am 32 years old and have paid tax all of my working life, I am an intelligent and educated person (i suspect from your writings considerably more than yourself).
I was told throughout my life that due to a medical condition i would not concieve naturally without help. Therefore I find your comments offensive and above all utterly superfluous.

If you are male then try keeping your !!!!!! in your trousers where it belongs rather than stuck on the front of your head where it seems to be currently.

If you are female then I have nothing to say to you whatsoever becuase you really should know better.

To all of those who have been very helpful, thank you so much...
x

Congratulations on concieving against the odds.
Must remember that joke about the d**k and trousers. I can't even type the words without feeling rude, how pathetic am I?

Not sure if you intend to ask for maintenance from your ex partner but if you continue to work after the baby is born and get maintenance from your ex partner this will not be taken into account for Working Tax Credit purposes. However if you claim Income Support it will be taken into account.

Best of luck.
I wish people would worry more about their taxes being wasted on a pointless war and big businesses/ rich people who use clever accountants to evade tax. In my opinion I would rather the Government tackled these areas.
Also with the reduced birth rate in the Western World and an ever increasing elderly population one could argue that you are helping your country by getting pregnant. Congratulations again.

MSE_ForumTeam1

Back to helping the OP with specific moneysaving advice please! If you want to depate the politics of single mothers, please use Discussion Time. This one is only moneysaving.

Thanks