An eligible parent can transfer primary carer leave entitlements to an eligible partner, provided both meet work criteria and the partner takes over primary responsibility for the child. This includes the associated IRD government-funded parental leave payments. A parent can transfer some or all of their entitlement to their spouse or partner when registering for paid parental leave. Payments run for one continuous period of 26 weeks total between the family — for example, if one parent receives payments for 10 weeks and transfers the entitlement to their partner, the partner receives payments for the remaining 16 weeks, starting the day after the first parent's period ends.
The key restriction
Under the Parental Leave and Employment Protection Act 1987 entitlements can only be transferred once, and once transferred, cannot be transferred back. So a family effectively gets one "handover" — they can't pass the payments back and forth between partners multiple times. Each person can only have one period of payments, and payments can't be moved back and forth between them.
This was recently demonstrated by the Employment Relations Authority (ERA) who recently upheld a refusal from the IRD to reinstate the mother’s parental leave payments when requesting to re-transfer back the entitlement from her spouse after earlier changing to nominate him as the primary carer.
The ERA agreed with the IRD that such a transfer is a one-time event, and despite the parent’s contention that the IRD failed in informing them of this limitation the ERA essentially concluded that their lack of awareness is not the IRD’s fault. The couple ended up losing 7 weeks’ worth of IRD parental payments.
Eligibility for the receiving partner
To qualify for the transferred payments, the receiving partner must stop working, take on primary day-to-day care of the child, and independently meet the standard "work test." This means they need to have worked an average of at least 10 hours a week for any 26 weeks within the 52 weeks before the baby's due date or the date the child came into care permanently — the test is measured against that original date, not the date of transfer. Because the receiving partner's own income determines their payment rate, their weekly payments may differ from what the transferring parent was receiving.
One flexibility point
If the transfer is requested before payments actually start, the transfer can be cancelled, and the original parent will then receive the full continuous 26-week period themselves. So the one-time-only lock applies once a transfer has taken effect — not before.
Paid Parental Leave
Parental leave maximum weekly payment went up on 1
st July 2026 to $811.05. Currently paid parental leave is 26 weeks, the current National Government recently making promises to raise that to 30 weeks if they remain in power following the upcoming November elections.
More reading
For more information on parental leave please see our eBook on the subject here:
www.employers.co.nz/parental-leave-guide-product.aspx. The Parental Leave eBook is free to download for members in your Employers Toolbox account here:
https://toolbox.employerstoolbox.co.nz/ref.aspx?id=28