Paid Parental Leave

Hey Peanut, the 14 weeks of paid parental leave will come to you in the first 14 weeks of your maternity leave. They base the payments on when you are first going on leave from your job.

Once you apply for paid parental leave and are accepted, you'll get a letter from the IRD advising you of when the leave will be paid into your bank account (fortnightly), the starting date (usually two weeks after you first go on maternity leave), and the dollar amount you should expect.

That's right, KH25 -- you have to apply for it, and it's tied to your ending date at work and the start of the legally entitled 52 weeks of maternity leave that you can take. It's one of those "red tape" things that would require a very loooooong post to explain fully!

Peanut - if you get paid holiday pay until then, why don't you take them as holidays & just start your parental leave from the 1st Feb? Then your IRD payments won't start until then ie when you start your actual parental leave. Technically if you're getting paid holiday pay, I would've thought you would be on holiday - not on parental leave. I finished work 2 weeks before my due date & took those 2 weeks as holidays & had my parental leave from work (& payments from the IRD) start from my due date.

I did that, I took my holiday leave and started my paid parental leave after that, because Alize was 2wks early I ended up having him before my maternaty leave started and was still receiving holiday pay IYKWIM.