Before the Baby Arrives: The UK Money List

In the weeks before your first baby is born, the financial things you actually need to sort out in the UK are fewer than the internet suggests, and most of the ones that matter are not on the shopping list. A short list is required by law: register the birth, claim Child Benefit, and give your employer proper notice about leave. A slightly longer list is not required at all, but quietly decides what would happen to your child if something happened to you before they were grown.

Almost everything you will find when you search this is American, written around retirement accounts, trusts and health-insurance costs that have nothing to do with a UK household. This is the UK version. It separates the handful of hard deadlines from the voluntary admin that is easy to leave until "after the baby comes" and then never gets done, because after the baby comes there is no time at all.

None of it takes long. Most of it is free. The one part that costs money, life cover, is also the part that is simplest to arrange while you are pregnant rather than sleep-deprived with a newborn, and there is a good reason to do it in that order.

What the law actually requires before and just after the birth

Strip away the noise and the compulsory list is short. You must register the birth within the legal window. You should claim Child Benefit, both for the payment and for a reason most parents never hear about. And if you are employed, you must give your employer formal notice of when you intend to take maternity or paternity leave, by a specific point in the pregnancy, or you can lose the right to take it when you planned.

That is essentially it as far as the law is concerned. Everything else on this page, a will, a guardian, nomination forms, life cover, is voluntary. But "voluntary" is misleading, because those are the things that decide who raises your child and what they live on if the worst happens, and they are far more urgent than the muslin cloths and the car seat that dominate the lists people actually read.

Registering the birth: the deadline and who has to be there

In England and Wales you must register the birth within 42 days, at a register office in the district where the baby was born or by appointment elsewhere. Northern Ireland uses the same 42-day window. Scotland is stricter, at 21 days. Miss the deadline and it can still be done, but you may be asked to explain why, and it holds up everything that depends on the certificate.

Who can register, and whose name goes on the certificate, depends on whether you are married. A married mother can register on her own and name the father. An unmarried couple who both want the father named on the certificate generally have to attend and sign together, because in England and Wales it is being on the birth certificate (for births registered from December 2003) that gives an unmarried father parental responsibility. If you are not married, that signature is not a formality, it is what makes him the child's legal parent in the eyes of the school, the hospital and, later, an insurer.

Source: gov.uk, Register a birth, and Parental rights and responsibilities.

Child Benefit, and the pension trap for the parent who stops work

Claim Child Benefit even if one of you earns enough that it will be partly or fully clawed back through the High Income Child Benefit Charge. The reason is nothing to do with the money you receive. When a parent registers the claim, the parent who is not working, or working less, is credited with National Insurance toward their own state pension for each year they are caring for a child under 12. A parent who gives up work and does not claim can lose those qualifying years without ever realising, and only discover the gap decades later when their state pension is short.

If you would rather not receive payments you know will be taxed back, you can register the claim and opt out of the payments while keeping the credits. That is the box to look for. Registering also means your child is issued a National Insurance number automatically as they approach 16, one less thing to chase.

Maternity, paternity and the income that drops

The part of new-parent finances that catches people is not a bill, it is the fall in income while one of you is off work. Statutory Maternity Pay runs for up to 39 weeks: the first 6 weeks are paid at 90% of average weekly earnings, and the following 33 weeks at a flat statutory rate, or 90% of your earnings if that is lower. Maternity leave itself can run to 52 weeks, but the last stretch is usually unpaid. Statutory Paternity Pay is much shorter, and Shared Parental Leave lets some couples divide the time differently.

Source: gov.uk, Maternity pay and leave.

The practical task before the birth is to map the actual numbers your household will live on month by month across that year, because for most families there is a period where income is materially lower and outgoings are higher. Employers must be told you are pregnant and when you intend to start leave by around the 15th week before the due date to secure your rights, so put that notice in writing in good time. If money will be tight during the leave, MoneyHelper has budgeting tools built for exactly this drop, and none of them cost anything.

A will and a guardian: the only way to choose who raises your child

This is the single most important thing on the list, and the one most first-time parents put off. A will is the only legal way to appoint a guardian, the person who would raise your child if both parents died. Without one, no note in a drawer and no conversation with your sister is binding: the courts decide, and family members can end up disagreeing at the worst possible moment about where the child lives.

A will is also what controls who inherits. If you are not married, this matters enormously, because under the intestacy rules an unmarried partner inherits nothing, however long you have been together and whether or not you share a child. A surviving partner can be left with no legal claim on the home or savings held in your sole name. This is a live risk for the many couples who buy or move in together before marrying; we set out what a partner does and does not get in moving into a house that is in your partner's name.

One trap worth naming: having a baby does not update or revoke an existing will. Marriage revokes a will (unless it was written in expectation of that marriage), but a birth does not. A will you made years ago, leaving everything to a parent or a sibling, still stands after your child arrives unless you rewrite it.

Nomination forms and pensions: the money that skips your will

Some of the largest sums a young family would receive on a death never pass through the will at all. A workplace death-in-service benefit, typically a multiple of salary, and the lump sum from a pension are usually paid at the discretion of scheme trustees, guided by a nomination or "expression of wish" form. If that form still names a parent, an ex-partner, or nobody, the trustees may not send the money where you would want it.

Before the baby arrives, log in to each pension and to your employer's benefits system and check who is named. Update them to your partner, and think about how a young child would actually receive money, which is usually through your partner or a trust rather than directly. If you have recently married and changed your name, those records need to match too, a point we cover in your new surname and the name on the policy. Newly married readers should also run through the wider list in the three nomination forms to change after a wedding.

Life cover: why arranging it before the birth is simpler

A new baby is the clearest possible example of a new dependant: a person who, for the best part of two decades, cannot earn and relies entirely on the adults around them. If one parent's income vanished, the question is not abstract, it is whether the mortgage or rent still gets paid and whether the surviving parent could afford to be present rather than working every hour to stay afloat.

For replacing an income across a childhood, many parents use family income benefit, which pays a regular monthly amount for the rest of the policy term rather than a single lump sum, because a monthly figure is far easier for a grieving partner to manage than a large cheque and a spreadsheet. What the household would need to cover in the gap before any workplace lump sum is even paid is worth thinking through separately; we look at that in what the family lives on before the lump sum arrives.

There is a timing reason to do this before the birth rather than after. Life insurance applications ask about your health as it is now. Pregnancy can bring temporary complications, raised blood pressure, gestational diabetes, that are entirely normal but can make an application taken out during or just after a pregnancy more complicated to assess. Arranging cover earlier, when your health history is settled, keeps it straightforward and means the household is protected from the day the baby arrives. If you want to see what that would involve, you can get life insurance quotes and have an FCA-authorised broker size it against your income and your mortgage or rent. What an insurer offers still depends on underwriting, and nothing here is a promise of cover.

Scotland and Northern Ireland

The framework is broadly UK-wide, but two things differ. Birth registration in Scotland must be done within 21 days rather than 42, and is handled by the National Records of Scotland through the local registrar rather than the General Register Office. The rules on parental responsibility for unmarried fathers, and the intestacy rules that decide who inherits without a will, also differ in Scotland and in Northern Ireland from those in England and Wales, so a will drafted for one nation should not be assumed to work identically in another.

What does not differ is the underlying point of this whole list: the legal deadlines are the easy part, and the things that genuinely protect a child, a will, a named guardian, up-to-date nominations and cover that matches your household, are the ones nobody makes you do. You can read the rest of this topic through our guide to life events that change who depends on you. Free, independent help on the money side is available from Citizens Advice, which will not sell you anything.

Frequently asked questions

What do new parents in the UK actually have to do by law?

Register the birth within 42 days in England, Wales and Northern Ireland, and within 21 days in Scotland. Claim Child Benefit from HMRC, and give your employer proper notice of maternity or paternity leave. Everything else, including wills and guardians, is voluntary but usually more urgent than parents expect.

Do we need a will before the baby arrives?

It is the only way to appoint a guardian for your child, and the only way to say who inherits if you both die. Without one the intestacy rules decide, and an unmarried partner receives nothing. Having a baby does not update or revoke an existing will.

Should we sort life cover before or after the birth?

Before is simpler. Applications ask about your health now, and pregnancy complications such as raised blood pressure or gestational diabetes can complicate an application made during or shortly after a pregnancy. Arranging cover early also means the household is protected from the day the baby arrives.