Are You Still Covered on Maternity Leave?

If you are on maternity leave, your death in service cover almost certainly continues through the paid part, because you are still employed and your contractual benefits carry on. The part to check is the unpaid stretch at the end. That is where some schemes treat things differently, and it is the very period when a new baby is at home and the household is leaning hardest on you.

The reason the paid phase is safe is simple. Being on maternity leave does not end your employment. Your contract continues, and with it the terms your employer provides — including a group life scheme — even though your normal salary is replaced by maternity pay for a time. Group life is a benefit of employment, not of turning up, so for most of your leave it stays exactly as it was.

The honest answer to whether you are still covered on maternity leave, then, is: yes for the paid weeks, and probably for the unpaid weeks too, but the unpaid weeks are the ones worth confirming in writing rather than assuming. What follows explains why the two phases are treated differently and what to ask before the unpaid stretch begins.

The short answer: paid leave keeps it, the unpaid stretch is what to check

UK maternity leave can run for up to 52 weeks, made up of 26 weeks of ordinary maternity leave followed by 26 weeks of additional maternity leave. Statutory Maternity Pay, if you qualify, lasts up to 39 weeks. That leaves a gap: for many new mothers the final stretch of leave, roughly the last 13 weeks, is unpaid.

Source: GOV.UK, Maternity pay and leave, and Statutory Maternity Pay (SMP) guidance, published under the Open Government Licence v3.0.

Throughout all of that, whether paid or unpaid, you remain an employee. The law protects most of your contractual terms during maternity leave as if you were still at work, with normal pay being the main exception. Because death in service is a contractual benefit rather than pay, the default position is that it continues. The reason the unpaid weeks still deserve a second look is not that the law strips your cover, but that some scheme rules attach membership to something that does pause when the pay stops — the pension contributions coming out of your salary.

Why ordinary maternity leave keeps your cover

During ordinary maternity leave, and generally during the paid part of additional maternity leave, your employer must maintain your terms and conditions as though you had not been away. Group life cover falls squarely inside that. So does the employer's pension contribution: while you are on paid maternity leave, the employer normally keeps paying into your pension based on your normal salary, even though your own contribution is calculated on the lower maternity pay you actually receive.

That last detail matters more than it looks, because in many workplaces the death in service scheme and the pension are administered together, and eligibility for the life cover is framed around being an active member of the pension. While the employer is still contributing on your behalf, that link holds and the cover holds with it. This is why the paid phase is rarely where problems appear.

It is also why the cover you have through work behaves so differently from a policy you own yourself. A scheme benefit depends on the state of your employment and your membership; it moves when they move. A personal policy does not care whether you are at your desk, on leave or between jobs. That distinction runs through every question in this cluster, and our guide to death in service and employer cover sets it out in full.

The unpaid stretch, and why it is the risky one

When Statutory Maternity Pay ends and the leave continues unpaid, two things can change at once. First, there is no salary for pension contributions to come out of, so your own contributions stop, and in many schemes the employer's contributions stop too unless something has been agreed to keep them going. Second, if your life cover is tied to active pension membership, the pause in contributions is exactly the sort of event that can be read as a break in that membership.

Whether it actually interrupts the death in service benefit depends entirely on how your scheme is drafted. Many schemes are written to keep group life running throughout family leave regardless of contributions, precisely because the alternative would be indefensible. Others are less careful, and a small number treat a period of unpaid leave as suspending membership and the cover with it. You cannot tell which sort you have from the fact that nothing was said, because nothing is said either way — the answer sits in the scheme rules, not in a letter to you.

This is the same underlying issue that affects unpaid leave of any kind, and it is worth understanding that maternity leave is not uniquely protected here; it is protected by employment law up to a point, and by the specific wording of your scheme beyond it. The safe move is to treat the unpaid weeks as something to confirm, not assume.

What the benefit is calculated on

There is a second question hiding behind "am I covered", and it is "covered for how much". Death in service is usually a multiple of salary, and the word "salary" is doing a lot of quiet work.

A well-drafted scheme applies the multiple to your normal contractual salary, so the sum insured stays where it should be even while you are receiving reduced maternity pay. A scheme that instead applies the multiple to pay actually received in the relevant period can produce a much smaller figure for the months you are on statutory pay, and potentially a very small one during any unpaid weeks. Same multiple, very different outcome, depending on which salary figure the rules point at.

This is not academic. If your household treats "four times my salary" as a fixed backstop, and the scheme quietly means "four times what I was actually paid last month" while you are on statutory maternity pay, the backstop is a fraction of what you think it is for a stretch of months. The scheme booklet states which definition applies. It is worth reading the earnings definition specifically, not just the headline multiple, and the same care applies to schemes based on pensionable pay such as the NHS one described in what two years' pay actually buys a nurse's family.

Maximum dependency, minimum cover

The cruelty of the timing is worth naming plainly. The unpaid final weeks of maternity leave are, for many families, the point of greatest dependency and least income at the same moment. There is a newborn who cannot be left, a partner who may also have taken leave, no maternity pay coming in, and a household running on savings and one income. If that is also the window in which a poorly drafted scheme reduces or pauses your death in service, then the cover is at its thinnest exactly when your family could least absorb its loss.

Most people never find out, because most people do not die during a few unpaid weeks of maternity leave. But the whole point of life cover is that it holds during the low-probability, high-consequence moment, and a benefit that dips precisely in the window where a death would be most financially catastrophic is not doing the job you were relying on it to do. That is the specific exposure this page exists to flag, and it is the reason a new parent should not treat "I have death in service at work" as the end of the conversation.

What to sort out, in writing, before the unpaid weeks

A few concrete steps close most of the risk, and they are far easier to take while you are organised in early leave than in the exhausted middle of it.

• Ask HR to confirm both phases in writing. Specifically: does group life continue during the unpaid part of maternity leave, and is the benefit based on my normal salary or on pay actually received? Get the answer in an email, not a corridor reassurance.
• Ask what happens to pension membership during the unpaid weeks, since that is often what the life cover is pinned to. If membership pauses, ask explicitly whether the death benefit pauses with it.
• Update your expression of wish now that you have a child. A nomination made before the baby existed may not reflect who you would want the money to reach or who would manage it for the child. Where no valid nomination is on file, the decision falls to the scheme's trustees, with the consequences set out in who receives the money when there is no expression of wish. If you also hold public-sector benefits, note that some schemes limit who you can name, as with the restriction explained in why a teachers' death grant cannot be left to a trust.
• Close any gap with cover you own. If there is a real risk the scheme thins during the unpaid stretch, or the amount is smaller than your family would need, a personal policy is the way to guarantee a fixed sum that does not move with your leave status. You can get life insurance quotes and have an FCA-authorised broker set the amount against your actual outgoings and your child's dependency, not against a scheme figure that shifts.

There is a practical reason to arrange any personal cover sooner rather than later, too: it is money and stability your family may need in the very first weeks after a death, before any work benefit is processed. That timing problem is a subject in its own right, covered in what a family actually lives on before the lump sum arrives.

Scotland and Northern Ireland

The core of this answer holds across the UK: maternity leave does not end your employment, and a contractual death in service benefit normally continues while you are off, with the unpaid tail being the part to confirm against your own scheme's rules. The statutory framework for maternity leave and pay is set slightly differently in Northern Ireland from Great Britain, but it mirrors the same shape of paid and unpaid periods, and it does not change the central point that your cover follows your employment and your scheme rules rather than your leave label. Wherever you are, the decisive document is your scheme booklet, and the decisive conversation is the written one with your employer before the unpaid weeks begin.

Frequently asked questions

Am I still covered by death in service on maternity leave?

Ordinary maternity leave generally keeps your contractual benefits running, including group life, because your employment continues. The position during the later unpaid period depends on the scheme rules, and on whether membership is tied to pension contributions. Ask HR to confirm both phases in writing, so you are relying on the scheme's actual wording rather than an assumption.

Does cover change when my maternity pay stops?

It can. Statutory Maternity Pay lasts up to 39 weeks, while maternity leave can run to 52 weeks, so the last stretch is usually unpaid. Some schemes treat unpaid leave as a break in membership, while better ones keep the benefit running on your normal salary throughout. Nothing is sent to tell you which applies, so it is worth checking before that stretch begins.

What is my benefit based on if I am on reduced pay?

Well-drafted schemes use your normal contractual salary rather than the reduced maternity figure, but not all do. Where the multiple is applied to pay actually received, the sum insured can drop sharply for the months you are on statutory pay. The scheme booklet states which figure applies, so read the earnings definition rather than just the headline multiple.