Hi ladies,

Just a quick one - Fiance and I have a joint income of around 60K. I'm just thinking about applying for benefits (tax credits etc) - do they base it on your old salary (so before you were on maternity leave) or do they base it on what you use to earn?

I have sent off my forms for Maternity Allowance - when should/how should I apply for the benefits I might be entitled to?

Thanks girls

Rucky 35 & 2

hello

you can apply for child benifit as soon as the baby is here, we got our form in the bounty pack at the hospital, this is ??80 a month and not means tested

as for tax credits we earned over 60K last year as we were saving for my maternity leave and doing overtime and unfortunatley they use this so we are currently getting nothing, i am going back to work part time and they have said to let them know of changes when i go back so they can recalulate and ajust accordingly, they will only do starting claims based on last years P60s though x

they WILL take your mat leave pay into account- they also disregard the the frst ??100 a week of mat income- when I phoned up for a claim pack and explained the woman worked out our annual income whilst on mat leave and told me how much to put on the form for my income x

Piggy pops, you may be entitled to something. Ring them up and ask them to base their calculations on 2010-2011 earnings. Thats what we did and now we get some help!!

I was told I had to apply using 2009-2010 earnings then when we got our award letter through to ring up and inform them of the current changes and tell them the estimated incomes for 2010-2011. I've done this and am now waiting for the amended award letter, fingers crossed it make a decent difference x

Ladies, this is really helpful - thank you!!! So now I have my MA forms, everything else waits until Bubs is here?

Rucky 35 & 5