Maternity Allowance- Earnings before it

[moss]

I'm a full time student but I am going to qualify for maternity allowance according to the woman I just spoke to on the phone. She mentioned, though, that the student she had just spoken to is only going to get around £27 a week because she was hardly making any NI contributions. Does anyone know roughly how much you need to earn in order to qualify for the maximum allowance and how I can figure out what I might get? I only get around $130 a week now but will soon be full-time for around 3 months before the baby is born.

Oh! And also, I was on an NHS contract but not always working for them during some of the qualifying time for MA (kind of like working for an agency)... Apparently not working some weeks won't necessarily disqualify those weeks from counting as working since I was technically on a payroll. Problem is, I can't remember how much I actually was working and I don't have my payslips. How do I prove I was working at all during that time? The NHS aren't being helpful. They are saying there is no way they can look into that because it would take too long. grr.

 

[Suzie and Faith]

I'm not 100% sure of the answers but for me to claim for my MA I had to sent off 13 (i think it was 13) weeks worth of payslips from anytime in the last 66 weeks - so naturally i chose the highest paid ones! The most you can get from MA is £116.75 a week, if your average earnings from the payslips you send is LESS than 116.75 you get 90% of whatever that average is.

I'm getting the full 116.75 a week

Whilst i think they do need the payslips i think there is a way round this which the maternity allowance people should be able to help you with - i believe it involves getting copies of your bank statements to prove when and who the money was from.

Hope that helps somehow, feel free to PM me

 

[kalia]

Maternity Allowance pays a standard weekly rate of £117.18 or 90 per cent of your average gross weekly earnings (before tax), whichever is the smaller.

If NHS won't say and you don't have your payslips I'm not sure what you do. Although I assume they would have to give you a P45 or whatever that form thing is that you get that details all you tax contributions for the tax year, and it would have that information on it. If that's not true, write to the NHS asking for that information and stating that if they will not provide it within 28 days they should provide you with a written explanation of why not. That may make them more likely to respond.

One word of warning - careful about relying on the 3 months of full-time work before baby arrives. I've been signed off since 28 weeks and although I did choose to go back for 2 weeks because I had things I wanted to get finished my employers encouraged me to leave (in a supportive way, not a bad way). So although I've only been on maternity leave for a week and 2 days I only worked 2 weeks in the last 3 months of my pregnancy. Hopefully you will continue to be healthy and not have my problems though (I'm on crutches now )

 

[paradysso]

during my first pregnancy i was a student (nurse) and all i could claim was income support or incapacity if you have partner.

 

[Huddsgirl]

where is sherlock when u need her

 

[tuck]

try this link

http://www.dwp.gov.uk/advisers/ni17a/ma/index.asp

it does say that you only have to provide proof of earnings for the 13 weeks that you are going to use for your claim