Bereavement Leave Laws by State: Who Actually Gets Time Off

Someone dies and you need days: for the funeral, the paperwork, the flight, the part where you can't think. Whether you're entitled to those days depends almost entirely on which state you work in, and in most states the answer is that no law gives them to you. Your employer's handbook does, or nothing does.

Here's the actual law in all 50 states and DC as of August 2026, with the statutes cited: the five states that make employers provide bereavement leave, the three that make your accrued sick leave or PTO usable after a death, the two whose any-reason leave works in practice, and what to do in the rest.

The federal Family and Medical Leave Act doesn't cover bereavement. Its qualifying reasons are birth and bonding, adoption or foster placement, caring for a spouse, child, or parent with a serious health condition, the employee's own serious health condition, and military exigencies and caregiving ^[1]. A family member's death isn't on the list. FMLA leave you were taking to care for someone ends when they die.

No federal law requires paid bereavement leave either. So everything below is state law, and most of it is recent: four of the five state mandates took effect in 2023 or later.

California: 5 days, unpaid, within 3 months. Employers with 5 or more employees must allow up to 5 days of bereavement leave per death for an employee with 30 days on the job, for a spouse, child, parent, sibling, grandparent, grandchild, domestic partner, or parent-in-law. The days don't have to be consecutive and must be used within 3 months.

The leave is unpaid unless your employer's policy pays it, but you can run your accrued vacation, sick leave, or personal time during it, and the employer can ask for documentation such as a death certificate or obituary ^[2].

Illinois: 2 weeks, unpaid, within 60 days. The Family Bereavement Leave Act gives up to 10 work days of unpaid leave per death at FMLA-covered employers (generally 50 or more employees) for FMLA-eligible employees, capped at 6 weeks in a year when there's more than one death. It covers a child, stepchild, spouse, domestic partner, sibling, parent, parent-in-law, grandchild, grandparent, and stepparent, and it also covers pregnancy loss, stillbirth, failed adoption or surrogacy, and unsuccessful fertility treatment ^[3].

A separate law, the Child Extended Bereavement Leave Act, gives a parent who loses a child to suicide or homicide up to 12 weeks unpaid at employers with 250 or more full-time employees, or 6 weeks at 50 to 249 ^[4].

Oregon: 2 weeks per death, unpaid, within 60 days. Oregon was the first state to mandate bereavement leave, in 2014. Under the Oregon Family Leave Act, employers with 25 or more employees must give eligible employees up to 2 weeks of leave per family member's death, capped at 4 weeks per year, completed within 60 days of learning of the death.

Family reaches spouses, domestic partners, children, parents, siblings, grandparents, grandchildren, and anyone whose closeness is the equivalent of family ^{[5] [6]}. Oregon's separate paid sick time is also expressly usable for funerals, arrangements, and grieving ^[16].

Vermont: 2 weeks, unpaid, within a year. New in 2025. Act 32 added bereavement leave to Vermont's Parental and Family Leave Act effective July 1, 2025. Employers with 10 or more employees working 30-plus hours a week must allow up to 2 weeks (no more than 5 workdays consecutively) within one year of the death of a child, parent, grandparent, grandchild, sibling, spouse, civil union partner, or domestic partner. The law covers time to settle the estate, which no other state's does explicitly ^[7].

Washington: 7 paid days, but only after the death of a child. Washington's Paid Family and Medical Leave pays for leave during the 7 calendar days after the death of a child you would have taken birth or bonding leave for, which reaches stillbirths. That's the whole benefit; the state program itself confirms bereavement is otherwise not covered ^{[8] [9]}.

One warning, because it's circulating: some 2026 HR guides claim Washington expanded this to any family member's death starting July 2026. The current statute text, amended through 2025, contains no such provision ^[8]. Don't plan around a law that doesn't exist.

Maryland. The Flexible Leave Act doesn't create bereavement leave, but at employers with 15 or more employees that offer any earned paid leave, you're entitled to use it for the death of an immediate family member: a child, spouse, or parent ^[10].

Minnesota. Every employer must provide Earned Sick and Safe Time (at least 1 hour per 30 worked, up to 48 hours a year), and since mid-2024 it's expressly usable to arrange or attend a funeral or memorial and to handle financial and legal matters after a family member's death. Minnesota's family definition is the broadest in the country and includes one person you designate each year ^[11].

Colorado. Every employer's paid sick leave under the Healthy Families and Workplaces Act must, since August 2023, be usable to grieve, attend a funeral or memorial, or handle financial and legal matters after a family member's death ^[12].

Maine and Nevada, in practice. Neither names bereavement, but Maine requires employers with more than 10 employees to provide up to 40 hours a year of paid leave usable for any reason ^[13], and Nevada requires the same of employers with 50 or more employees ^[14]. No reason required means a funeral qualifies.

In the other 40-plus jurisdictions, no law requires private employers to give you bereavement leave, paid or unpaid. Three things are worth knowing about that landscape.

Most sick-leave laws don't cover it. Alaska, Arizona, Connecticut, Michigan, Nebraska, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, and Rhode Island all mandate paid sick time, and every one of those laws limits it to illness, care, and safety reasons. A death isn't a permitted use. New York and New Jersey have bills that would add bereavement; as of August 2026 they're proposals, and a proposal gets you zero days.

Public employees often have their own rules. South Carolina state workers get 3 consecutive paid days for an immediate family death by statute ^[17]. Tennessee state employees get 3 paid days. Texas state agencies grant paid emergency leave for a family death. Utah public employers give 3 paid days, including after a miscarriage or stillbirth. North Carolina state workers got 40 hours by executive order in 2024. None of these reach private jobs; they're listed in the table below.

The handbook is the law that applies to you. Where no statute exists, whatever bereavement policy your employer wrote is what you have, and most employers do offer 3 to 5 days. Read the policy before the conversation: which relatives it covers, whether it's paid, whether it requires documentation. If it covers "immediate family," ask what that means in writing; the definition, not the day count, is where most disputes start.

A newer set of laws covers loss that never gets an obituary. California gives up to 5 days of reproductive-loss leave per event (up to 20 days a year) for a miscarriage, stillbirth, failed adoption, failed surrogacy, or unsuccessful assisted reproduction, on the same unpaid-with-accrued-leave terms as its bereavement law ^[15].

Illinois includes these losses in its Family Bereavement Leave Act's 10 days ^[3]. Massachusetts lets you use earned sick time for the employee's or spouse's health needs after a pregnancy loss or a failed assisted reproduction, adoption, or surrogacy ^[18]. Delaware, Utah, and Washington cover pregnancy loss for public employees.

What the law gives a private-sector employee in each jurisdiction. "Handbook decides" means no state law requires bereavement leave and no state sick-leave law includes it.

If you're in a mandate state, use the statute's own words when you ask: "I'm taking bereavement leave under" the law named in the table. Notice requirements are light everywhere; California and Illinois let the employer ask for documentation afterward, not before you go.

If you're anywhere else, the order of operations is the handbook's bereavement policy, then accrued PTO or vacation, then unpaid leave as a request. Employers grant unpaid days after a death far more often than people expect; the ask works better with a return date attached.

And whatever your state, the days off are for the person, and the tasks will try to eat them. MORTL's first-72-hours guide orders what actually has to happen now, the notification tracker keeps the account-closing out of your funeral week, and if the grief itself needs a professional, the verified grief counselor directory is sorted by state. Your own state's death-paperwork rules live in its state guide.

If the death you're grieving was a suicide, the 988 Suicide and Crisis Lifeline (call or text 988) is there for the people left behind too, any hour. Reaching out is a reasonable thing to do, and you don't have to be in crisis to call.

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Sources: the cited statutes and official agency pages in each state entry, read August 2026: California leginfo, Illinois ILGA, Oregon BOLI and ORS, Vermont DOL, Washington RCW and Paid Leave program, Maryland General Assembly, Minnesota Revisor, Colorado General Assembly, Maine Legislature, Nevada NRS, Massachusetts General Court, South Carolina Statehouse, and the US DOL FMLA FAQ.

"Handbook decides" entries are absence-of-statute findings cross-checked against multiple 2026 multi-state employment law surveys. See our Sources & Methodology.

This article is education, not legal advice. Statutes change; a state's labor department or an employment attorney can confirm what applies to your job. Public-employee rules above are examples, not a complete inventory.