If you are pregnant or looking to have children, this is a great question to be asking.

To start with, you will be focused quickly on how baby is doing and finding the right baby things for you to be using, then after baby arrives, you will be too busy with baby to think about insurance.

One insurance thing you do need to put on the to-do list, is adding baby to your medical insurance cover within three months of arriving, this article talks more about baby. This post is about you as mum.

In general, if you have income protection you will have some disability coverage for the first 12 months after finishing work, if you are on maternity leave for longer than this, then things get a little more interesting.

Let us start with income claims during pregnancy.

With the majority, if not all, income protection, excludes any pregnancy complication(s) that result in a disability up to 90 days after the end of the pregnancy. Anything pregnancy related during pregnancy and up until 90 days after the birth is going to be a challenge to claim. If the pregnancy related disability lasts longer than 90 days afterward baby is born, you could submit a claim from the 91st day.

If there is something of a non-pregnancy nature that causes disability prior to birth, this would be a normal disability claim. The insurance company could argue that the 90 days afterwards is not claimable as this would have been lost income time anyway. Though if the disability was not pregnancy related there is argument that there is still a valid claim to pay even in the 90 days after and ongoing. In the same way if you were on claim for a long term unrecoverable reason and you got pregnant, the pregnancy is not causing the disability, though it may not be helping.

The real question is what if you were disabled on maternity leave?

In this situation if it is pregnancy related and it stops you going back to work, after 90 days there is a reasonable assumption that the cover should be paying. If it was not pregnancy related then the 90-day exclusion should not apply. Either way the leave without pay clause of your policy will guide how the claim is assessed, both for definition of disability and level of claim payment.

In general terms, most policies allow for up to 12 months of leave without pay. If it is less than 12 months since finishing paid work, then it is usually assessed on the prior to leave employment basis for occupation classification and income level for calculating the benefit payable.

If it is longer than 12 months then it will be assessed on a class 5 basis. The class 5 basis is not so good. The majority of class 5 definitions of disability are, confined to bed under medical supervision for 13 weeks and still confined to bed under medical supervision to receive a claim, or something similarly onerous. If you do not plan to return to work within 12 months of baby arriving, you may want to review your need for income protection. If you have had medical conditions since you took your original cover, then you need to have a chat with us, as removing your income protection cover may not be in your best interests long term.

You have been on maternity leave but you have not gone back to work full time or you have started something new part time.

In the first 12 months of maternity leave, the prior to leave employment earnings will be the basis of the value of the claim, indemnity or agreed product types there is possibly not much difference.

This is now where agreed value income protection comes into its own. Once you have got through your maternity leave and then start back at work, you will possibly be doing reduced or part time hours, as a lot of mothers do. If this is the case then the agreed value is going to be significantly better for you, as your previous full time earnings will be locked in for a total disability claim.

This is rather than indemnity value income protection's 75% of earnings measured at point of claim. Which means with agreed value if you go back to work for 30 hours per week, then you are disabled and unable to work 10 hours per week, you would qualify for the full agreed value total disability claim based on the occupation class of your policy and your previous full time agreed value income benefit.

Even though you have not returned to work full time, you are employed and being paid, the Class 5 redefinition clause in your policy wording would not trigger.

Admittedly during this time you may not want to be paying the premium for a full claim, as reduced hours usually comes with reduced income. With all policies, you can reduce cover without medical questions or cancelling completely, so managing this to your new post baby budget is possible too.

Working through what is and is not possible with your income protection cover can be technical and a little complex, talking to us about your situation will help you understand what you have and how it works. Get in touch, we would be happy to help you.

The information is only intended to be of a general nature and should not be relied upon in any part without obtaining full details of the products and services by contacting Willowgrove Consulting Limited. All product and service details, terms, conditions and other information are subject to change at anytime without notice. Terms, conditions and fees apply to the various products and services and are available on request. A disclosure document will be provided to you on request free of charge.