Jim Jantz, JD
Director of Compliance – Absence, Disability, & Life
Bereavement leave used to be a straightforward, employer-provided benefit. For many years, providing time off after the loss of an employee’s family member was treated largely as a matter of employer discretion and support.
But that landscape has shifted. While offering bereavement leave is still a powerful way to support your team, it is in more places becoming subject to state and local requirements. If you are managing employees across multiple states or cities, treating bereavement as a "one-size-fits-all" internal policy may create compliance challenges.
The three forms of modern bereavement compliance
The most complicated part of this landscape is that lawmakers aren't all regulating bereavement the same way. Instead of one standard, we are seeing requirements show up in three distinct places:
- Standalone Statutory Leave: A few states require time off specifically after a death. Oregon provides eligible employees up to 2 weeks of leave per family member under the Oregon Family Leave Act. California requires up to five days under AB 1949, and separately added protected leave for reproductive loss, such as miscarriage or failed adoption, under SB 848. Illinois requires up to ten days under its Family Bereavement Leave Act, which also covers pregnancy and fertility loss. The specifics vary widely, from the number of days to which relationships count to the size of the employer covered.
- Paid Sick Leave (PSL): In a number of locations, the PSL laws already on the books can be used for grief, not just illness. Colorado's Healthy Families and Workplaces Act lets employees use accrued sick time to attend a funeral, grieve, or handle the financial and legal matters that follow a death. Minnesota's Earned Sick and Safe Time works much the same way, and Maryland also allows employees to apply earned leave to bereavement. In these states, an employee may have a right to paid time off after a loss, even if you have no separate bereavement policy at all.
- Paid Family and Medical Leave (PFML) Programs: This is the newest and least settled of the three. A few state PFML programs are beginning to intersect with bereavement, though most were not built for it. Washington includes a narrow benefit tied to the death of a child around the time of birth, and Maine PFML covers the death of a family member related to military service.
Because these requirements depend heavily on where your employee works, the type of law governing bereavement leave, the relationship to the person who died, and the size of your company, the picture varies widely from state to state.
The pitfall of auditing a single policy
Because bereavement requirements are scattered across different types of employment laws, you should not review your company's bereavement policy in isolation. A real compliance review means looking at your whole leave ecosystem. Your bereavement policy might offer three days, but a Colorado employee could also draw on sick time, and an Oregon employee could be entitled to two full weeks. Any of those can layer on top of what your handbook says.
It is also worth looking at how these rules play out in practice, not just how they read on paper. Are your managers asking for documentation that is legally restricted in certain locations? Are your notice expectations realistic and compliant across all locations where you operate?
Bringing your strategy up to date
To keep your organization protected while still supporting grieving employees, a few steps go a long way.
- Map your workforce footprint: Look at where your employees are actually working, including remote setups, and cross-reference them with jurisdictions that mandate bereavement leave, including under PSL or PFML.
- Review your LOA policies holistically: Review your bereavement, PSL, and FMLA/PFML policies together to ensure they don't contradict each other or create administrative confusion.
- Train your front line: Managers are usually the first to receive a bereavement leave request. Train them to route these requests to HR or leave administrators consistently, ensuring they handle the situation with empathy while getting the employee to the right place for compliance.
Support and compliance in the same move
None of this changes why bereavement leave exists. It is still one of the clearest ways to show your people they matter, especially in their hardest moments. The shift is simply that, in more and more states, support now has a legal floor, and keeping your policies in step with that floor protects your employees and your organization.
If you are trying to sort out how these overlapping rules apply across the states where your people actually work, that is exactly the kind of question our absence, disability, and life team helps untangle. Reach out to our team to talk through where your policies stand today and where they might need to catch up.
