Shared parental leave and pay

Black_Ribboner

Are you sure the policy a) relates to shared parental leave, not paternity leave and b) doesn't depend on your partner's benefits? My husband's company offers the same benefits to dads taking shared parental leave as mums taking maternity, four months full pay followed by statutory, but only if their partner is receiving statutory during that time.

So in our case, although my husband is taking the first two months as shared parental leave, he will only receive statutory pay as I get full pay from my employer for the maternity leave that I'll be taking at the same time. If I only had statutory pay, he'd get full pay for those two months.

The argument is that if both partners were employed by the company, they wouldn't both be entitled to four months full pay (which I can kind of understand), so even though I work elsewhere, it wouldn't be fair to have an arrangement where we could both be off on full pay. I have to say I'm not convinced by this and we are challenging it, but we haven't got long to go so nothing will change now.

But if it's not that situation, and it is just one rule for mothers and another for the non-birthing parent, then that does sound discriminatory. I'm far from an expert, but I'd be pushing at HR as a first step and maybe seeking external advice.

Good luck, I hope you can get it sorted. I'm all too familiar with the realisation that you won't get as much as you'd thought and hope you cam make it work for your family x

Sunshinegirl73

Hi there,

Op I think you mentioned that your OH was self employed? I'm almost certain that you both need to be employed for at least 26 weeks to qualify for shared parental leave? I think your OH's self employed status might mean that won't work. Have you looked into maternity allowance?