When can an employee take maternity leave in Estonia and how does it affect parental benefits?

Mothers are entitled to 100 calendar days of maternity leave. 

The length of maternity leave will be up to 100 calendar days. Although the mother’s parental benefit is paid for a shorter period (100 days) than the maternity benefit (140 days), the period of payment for the parental benefit is longer so the parent is guaranteed the same amount of time to care for their child, (covered with a benefit) as before.

Therefore, the period covered by the benefit after the birth of the child is not shortened. From the 140 calendar days of pregnancy and maternity leave under the old system, 40 calendar days will be moved under the new system to the period covered by shared parental benefit, during which parents will have more flexibility to combine work and family life.

The length of maternity leave will depend on when the mother takes maternity leave. For example:

• If the mother takes maternity leave 70 calendar days before the expected date of birth of the child, her maternity leave will be 100 calendar days.
• If the mother takes maternity leave 40 calendar days before the expected date of birth of the child, her maternity leave will be 70 calendar days. The remaining 30 calendar days will be moved to the period of the shared parental benefit, which means that the period after the birth of the child will be covered by the benefit that much longer.
• The rule remains that if the mother takes maternity leave less than 30 days before the expected date of birth, the period covered by parental benefit is reduced by the number of days by which the mother took maternity leave later than 30 days. Therefore, if a mother takes maternity leave 10 days before the expected date of birth of her child, her maternity leave will be 40 days, but her period of parental benefit will not be extended by 20 days after the birth of the child.

Maternity leave should be taken 70 to 30 calendar days before the expected date of birth of the child. After the expected birth of the child, maternity leave lasts for an additional 30 calendar days. The mother’s parental benefit will be paid in the same way as the parental benefit: monthly (not as an advance payment like the current maternity benefit), and the mother’s parental benefit will have the same minimum rate as the parental benefit (i.e., the minimum wage for the previous year).

If the mother is not entitled to the benefit for temporary incapacity for work under the Health Insurance Act or, to put it simply, if the mother is not employed, she is entitled to the mother’s parental benefit from the birth of the child until the child is 30 days old.