Bereavement Leave
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Bereavement Leave provides leave-earning employees with paid time off for bereavement following the death of an immediate family member and for travel time for a memorial event for the death of a Carolina colleague.
Bereavement Leave will go into effect Jan. 1, 2025. Employees may use Bereavement Leave retroactively to Sept. 27, 2024, for deaths of immediate family members. See below for criteria and required documentation.
- Permanent, probationary, and time-limited SHRA, EHRA Non-Faculty and twelve-month Faculty employees who work 40 hours per week are eligible for:
- Up to 40 hours of paid leave for bereavement following the death of an immediate family member.
- Following the loss of an immediate family member, bereavement leave may be used as the employee deems appropriate for time to grieve, attend a funeral, visitation or memorial service, deal with estate matters or other related needs. It is not required that the employee use the leave hours on consecutive days, but the employee must use the leave within 180 days of the date of death of the family member.
- Up to 8 hours of paid leave for travel time to and from a funeral or other memorial event for the death of a colleague at their current institution.
- Following the loss of a colleague, bereavement leave may only be used to attend the funeral, visitation or other memorial event.
- Prorated for employees who work 20-39 hours per week.
- Nine-month Faculty are NOT eligible for Bereavement Leave.
- There is no limit on the number of times the leave program can be used; it is 40 hours per each incident of death of any immediate family member and up to 8 hours per each incident of death of a colleague at your current institution; prorated for employees who work 20-39 hours per week.
Immediate family for Bereavement Leave follows the definition used in the Sick Leave policy and includes:
- Spouse
- Parent (biological, adoptive, or person who stood-in as “parent”)
- Child (biological, adopted, legal ward, foster care, or person for whom employee stands-in as “parent”)
- Grandparent and great-grandparent
- Grandchild and great-grandchild
- Sibling (biological or adoptive)
- Step-, half-, and in-law relation of the above
- Other dependent within the household
- Available on an as-needed basis.
- Manager approval required prior to use. Upon using requested leave hours, work with your department’s TIM Administrator to enter these hours into TIM on your behalf.
- Provide documentation to your manager for verification purposes. Acceptable forms of documentation include a death certificate, obituary or funeral/memorial service event program. The department is not obligated to retain this documentation, only to verify it.
- Employees have up to 180 days from date of the death to use this leave.
- Leave can be used all at one time or used on nonconsecutive days.
More about Bereavement Leave
For more information, see the Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs) page
of the North Carolina Office of State Human Resources website.
