To give families more flexibility to decide how best to use their leave provisions to care for their newborns, working fathers will be allowed to take up to four weeks of shared parental leave, subject to consent given by their spouse to share. This will apply for parents of citizen children born from 1 July 2017.
The enhancement to Shared Parental Leave requires changes to legislation, as well as significant system enhancements to ensure all the claims will be reimbursed accurately. These will take time. Employers will also need time to make adjustments to their infrastructure and HR processes. We have announced the enhancement earlier to give employers time to adjust.
Working fathers (including self-employed fathers) will be eligible for the four weeks of shared parental leave if they meet the existing eligibility criteria, as follows:
Yes, the father will be eligible for the enhanced Shared-Parental Leave if he can provide a medical memo from the doctor indicating that the child’s EDD was on or after 1 July 2017.
No, shared parental leave is allocated in a 1-week, 2-week, 3-week or 4-week blocks only.
No. SPL must be consumed only after the SPLAS declaration has been made.
Last Updated on: Monday, Nov 30, 2020 at 5:01 PM