Who Maternity Allowance is for
Maternity Allowance is a fallback payment, and that is a strength, not a weakness. Statutory Maternity Pay only works when you have one employer, enough continuous service with that employer, and earnings above a threshold. Real working lives are messier than that. People change jobs, take agency work, go self-employed, take time out, or earn too little in a particular job. Maternity Allowance is designed to catch those cases, using a test that looks across all your work in a 66-week window rather than at a single employer.
The five main groups
Self-employed women. If you work for yourself, there is no employer to pay Statutory Maternity Pay, so Maternity Allowance is the route. You need to have been registered as self-employed for at least 26 weeks in the 66 weeks before your baby is due, and the amount you receive depends on your Class 2 National Insurance contributions in that period.
Women who recently changed jobs. Statutory Maternity Pay requires 26 weeks of continuous employment with the same employer up to the qualifying week. If you started a new job too recently, you fail that test even if you have worked for years overall. Maternity Allowance adds your weeks together across employers, so a recent move does not wipe out your earlier work.
Women whose earnings are too low for Statutory Maternity Pay. Statutory Maternity Pay requires average weekly earnings at or above the lower earnings limit, which is £129 a week for 2026/27. If your earnings fall below that line, Maternity Allowance may still pay, provided you meet its own test of £30 a week or more in at least 13 weeks.
Agency, casual, and short-contract workers. If your work is broken into separate assignments or contracts, you may not build up continuous service with one employer, and you may have gaps between jobs. Those gaps do not matter for Maternity Allowance as long as 26 weeks in the 66-week window were worked, whether or not they were consecutive.
Women who have recently stopped working. GOV.UK states expressly that you may still qualify if you have recently stopped working, and that it does not matter if you had different jobs or periods of unemployment. Stopping work during pregnancy, for health or any other reason, is not by itself a bar to a claim.
Who it is not for
If you qualify for Statutory Maternity Pay from an employer, you claim that instead; you cannot receive both payments for the same period. If you are already receiving Statutory Maternity Pay from another job, GOV.UK states that you are not eligible for Maternity Allowance. The practical step is to ask each employer in turn whether they will pay Statutory Maternity Pay. An employer who refuses must give you form SMP1, explaining why, and that form becomes part of your Maternity Allowance claim.
The one question to ask first
Ask: will any employer pay me Statutory Maternity Pay? If the answer is yes, follow the employer route. If every employer says no, or you have no employer, Maternity Allowance is the payment to investigate, and the eligibility test page works through the exact rules.
A smaller, separate group
There is also a narrower route for women who are not employed or self-employed themselves but who do unpaid work for the business of a spouse or civil partner. That route pays £27 a week for up to 14 weeks, not 39, and it has its own conditions: the unpaid work must cover at least 26 weeks in the 66-week window, and the spouse or civil partner must be registered as self-employed and paying Class 2 National Insurance contributions in the same period. It is easy to confuse this 14-week route with the main 39-week payment, so keep the two apart when you read examples online.
Sources: GOV.UK, Maternity Allowance: eligibility; GOV.UK, Maternity Allowance: what you will get; nidirect, SMP introduction (lower earnings limit for 2026/27).