paternity pay

We are in the exact same situation. My partner got a new job in Jan and missed receiving paternity pay by 3 weeks. It's an absolute pain! And we aren't entitled to any benefits because we own our home. So means he will have to use annual leave when the baby is born, but we don't know when it'll be!!

Having moved here from the US it’s absolutely wild to me that maternity leave is so good while 2 weeks seems to be the norm for paternity!! (Yep unfortunately for either you have to be employed for the 26W to qualify)

My husband is quite high level at a small company and was the first to take paternity leave - I begged him to at least ASK about them being open to changing the policy but he never did. Since then multiple men there have taken the 2 weeks so it’s just the set policy now, and with baby #2 he’s kicking himself for not having brought it up from the beginning

it just seems like such a shame to put people in a position where they have to essentially choose between having a baby or staying in a job that makes them miserable to hang onto the parental leave policy (which in itself is rubbish!)

We had this with our first, partner had just started and was 2 weeks shy of getting the paternity.
He pulled all his holiday, some carers leave and any other leave he could qualify for and actually got 6 weeks off in the end! His boss was very understanding.
Have a look into what other leave can be taken.

Oh just remembered shared parental leave - not sure if you’d qualify but maybe worth looking into (basically you can give him a certain number of weeks of your mat leave)

https://www.gov.uk/shared-parental-leave-and-pay

thanks i think its still the same requirements for shared leave but it did cross my mind!

thanks, here's hoping my husband's new boss is as understanding.. their HR department took 6 weeks to send his contract through so it doesn't really bode well!

We’re the same so he’s having to use annual leave which has made it so difficult as he’s already had to book the time off because otherwise the dates will be taken by someone else and then if they’re short staffed what if they make him work. He told me last night that he now can’t change his dates as other people have booked time off around it. I am having a c section so it makes it slightly easier to plan dates but I still don’t have a date and now I’m worrying what if they want to do it sooner than the date he’s booked off from and they try saying he can’t be off

My bf is the higher earner so £180 smp is not even gonna touch the sides 😢 he’s just taking AL instead

i'm so sorry, that all sounds really stressful. it shouldn't have to be this way!

It really shouldn’t. With my first he was classed as self employed so there was no paternity at all and no paid holidays either unless we saved up enough money beforehand which we couldn’t do because I was off sick from work and started maternity early so we physically didn’t have extra money to save. Unfortunately he had to go straight back to work days after my having a c section. So tbh I’m grateful he can even take annual leave this time round

Definitely, I moved away from family to so we are kinda just winging it, I get full pay for 8 weeks after I give birth though so at least my company is a little better with Maternity leave, I saw a tiktok the other day and she got into 9k worth of credit card debt during maternity and it’s so stressful to think about 🥲