Bereavement Leave Policies
How much time can you take off from your company if you have a death in the family?
Hint: probably not enough.
Organizations offering paid bereavement leave rose to 89% in 2020, but the standard paid time off is only 3 days.
Putting that in perspective, you have:
one day to process the initial shock
one day to plan for a funeral
one day to attend the funeral
In my situation, the company I was at had a standard 3 day bereavement policy. However, you could request 5 days if you had to travel for the funeral.
In the past few years, a handful of companies made headlines by upping the number of bereavement days to 10-20.
Looking back, having an initial 10 days off would have been best. I felt like I flew home quickly after my dad's funeral, leaving a lot of work for my mom.
After those 2 weeks I would have welcomed getting back to a normal routine, but realizing there were still lots of estate tasks to deal with, I could have used another 10 flex days over the next few months. This would have allowed flexibility to spend a morning or afternoon on the phone or dealing with paperwork as it came up.
An estate doesn't get resolved in just a few days.
You cannot eliminate all of the tasks needed to settle an estate, but you can reduce the time they take with some up front preparation. Start now with your free Estate Map below.