Does being on maternity leave count as employment?

reddevilled

Hi,

Thanks in advance for listening and helping.

My wife was made redundant from her job when she was 7 months pregnant with our first child in April 2009. She was entitled to maternity leave and this was all paid as part of her redundancy package.

In June this year she decided she wanted to take on a part time job (a couple of evenings a week), at the same time we also found out she was pregnant with our second child!

She is planning on working until December (baby is due at the end of January) and we have since realised that this means she probably qualifies for maternity allowance as she will have been there 6 months.

My question is this - the matenity allowance rules state that you have to be employed for 26 weeks in the test period, and that you can take any 13 weeks salary in this period. Now her test period will be 18/10/09 - 22/01/11, will any of her maternity pay from the first child count either as earnings, or "employed" time?

Hope this makes sense and someone can clarify.

oompahloompah

I think it would be just her part time earnings that would be taken into account, not the benefits as well. If she worked til late December/early January then she should make the 26 weeks, depending on when in June she started working again.