redundancy maternity leave help

ropper

my partner has just been informed that her factory is closing and they are all been made redundant.she is coming up to the last month of her paid maternity leave (9th month) she has been informed that shell still be paid her statutory maternity pay.

what id like to know is can she claim dole once she lost her job for the last 3 months of what would of been unpaid maternity leave.im guessing she can

also what rules are there for being able to claim i.e savings in bank as we arent married but have some money (not a lot) she will be due to £7-8000

will this prevent her claiming or should we place it in childrens/mine savings or pay it off some of the mortgage

any help would be aprieciated

ALIBOBSY

Not sure about the maternity period, I would imagine as long as she signs on as available annd looking for work she can claim JSA.
Do you work youself? Not being married is irrelevent as you are treated as a couple for benefit purposes.
If she has enough NI paid/credited in the last 2 tax years (07/08 and 06/07 for claims made now) she could claim JSA (conts based) which does not take into account the partners work (if any) or any savings. But is only paid at the single person rate around £60 per wk if over 25. This runs for 182 days only.

If you work full time she would not qualify to claim the income based JSA which would pay the couple rate. The income based rate is also effected by any savings over 6k.

ali x

Bobl

If you transfer savings or use them to pay off the mortgage you will be committing fraud- you only need to claim benefits if you don't have enough to live on. Use the savings and then claim when you need to - Benefits are there for the needy, not the greedy.

ropper

shes 29 now and worked everyday since leaving school (apart from maternity leave).would her being on maternity leave this last 9 months affect what you say about NI contributions or is this taken in account.she was going to go back part time in novembr/december with this happening now she ll belooking to go back to work after xmas now

im working at the minute so what would be available then.as for commting fraud or been greedy thats the last thing i want to do.i was mainly asking if her redundancy money in her bank would stop her claiming and my savings which again isnt much i was merely asking if it would be better to pay some off mrtgage so if we did start to struggle we'd be in credit to take a payment holiday if needed

Bobl

Overpaying on your mortgage could be construed as deliberately depriving yourself of funds so you need to be careful, and as I understand it any savings will be offset against benefits. But probably better to move this to the Benefits section; people there know all the rules and will be better placed to advise you.