Bereavement leave is a paid time for the worker to be absent from work due to the death of a family member and its purpose is to mitigate grief, the suffering caused by the death of a loved one and the allocation of the worker’s time to be able to participate in the commemoration, funeral honors, vigil among other important rites, which define important mourning reactions immediately after death.
For this reason, labor regulations have provided in the regulation of special obligations of the employer regulated in article 57 of the Substantive Labor Code and added by law 1 of law 1280 of 2009, granting the worker in the event of the death of spouse, permanent partner or a family member up to the second degree of consanguinity, first of affinity and first and second civil, a paid leave of five (5) business days, regardless of the type of contract or employment relationship. excluding events of serious domestic calamity.
The degrees of relationship regulated by the mourning license are listed below:
FIRST AND SECOND DEGREE OF CONSANGUINITY:
- Parents
- Children (Natural-Adopted)
- Siblings
- Grandparents
- Grandchildren
FIRST DEGREE OF AFFINITY:
- Spouses
- Spouse’s parents
- Spouse’s extramarital children
FIRST CIVIL DEGREE:
- Adoptive parents
- Adopted children
SECOND CIVIL DEGREE: Added by the Ruling of the Constitutional Court C-892 of 2012
- Parents of the adoptive father (Grandparents)
- Children of the adopted child (Grandchildren)
- adoptive brothers
It is important to keep in mind that mourning leave is paid by the employer and does not interrupt or suspend the employment contract.
The responsibility ofThe worker must prove to the employer through a document issued by the competent authority that it is the family death certificate, added to the documents proving kinship such as civil registration, marriage certificate, extrajudicial declaration of cohabitation with a permanent partner within (30) days following the occurrence of the death event. In the event that the employer does not prove the respective documents, the five (5) business days of unpaid leave due to the absence of documentation will be deducted from the payroll.
It must be taken into account if the worker is on vacation and during this time the death of the family member occurs, the vacation must be interrupted and the worker can subsequently resume the right to enjoy his or her vacation in accordance with the justified interruption regulated by the article. 188 of the CST.
Additionally, the term of disability and other work licenses is interrupted and once the period of mourning leave has expired, the worker may resume the term of maternity leave, disabilities, among others.
Finally, labor regulations regulate the EPS’s obligation to provide psychological counseling to the family.
