Bereavement leave in New Zealand
Bereavement leave is paid time off when someone dies, or when a pregnancy ends in a miscarriage or stillbirth. Once you have worked for your employer for six months, the Holidays Act 2003 gives you at least 3 days' paid leave for each death of an immediate family member, or a miscarriage or stillbirth, and at least 1 day when someone else dies and your employer accepts you are bereaved.
Who qualifies, and from when
You are entitled to bereavement leave once you have six months' current continuous employment with the same employer. If your hours are irregular, the test is six months in which you worked an average of at least 10 hours a week, with at least 1 hour in every week or 40 hours in every month. This is the same test as for sick leave and family violence leave.
Counting it is simple. If you started on 2 March 2026, you complete six months on 1 September 2026, and bereavement leave is yours from 2 September 2026.
Before then, you have no legal entitlement, but your employer can agree to let you take bereavement leave in advance, or to take annual holidays or other paid or unpaid leave. Employment New Zealand is clear that your employer cannot make you take bereavement leave as annual holidays.
Three days or one day
You get at least 3 days for each death of your spouse or partner, parent, child, brother or sister, grandparent, grandchild, or your spouse's or partner's parent.
Since 31 March 2021, the same 3 days apply when you have a miscarriage or stillbirth, or when your partner does. They also apply to a former partner who would have been a biological parent, and to someone who had agreed to be the primary carer of the child, for example through adoption or a whāngai arrangement, and to that person's partner. The law defines a miscarriage as a pregnancy ending in its first 20 weeks; neither a miscarriage nor a stillbirth, as the law defines them, includes the end of a pregnancy through abortion services.
You get at least 1 day when anyone else dies, if your employer accepts you have suffered a bereavement. The law tells your employer to consider how close you were to the person, whether you have significant responsibility for the arrangements for the ceremonies, and any cultural responsibilities you have.
If more than one person dies at the same time, you can take the leave for each bereavement. These are minimums: your agreement may give more, and your employer can agree to extra, for example when a funeral is a long way away.
Taking it, proof and pay
Tell your employer as early as you can before you are due to start work that day, or, if that is not practicable, as soon as you can afterwards. The leave can be taken at any time and for any purpose relating to the bereavement. It does not have to be straight away or on consecutive days. Employment New Zealand gives the example of Tane, who takes 2 days for his grandmother's tangi and, a year later, a third day for the unveiling of her headstone.
The law is silent about proof, so your employer cannot make proof a condition of the leave. It is not barred from asking, either, so good faith applies: both of you should be responsive and communicative, and not mislead each other.
You are paid your relevant daily pay, what you would have earned had you worked that day, for each day of leave that would otherwise have been a working day. Where that cannot be worked out, or your daily pay varies within the pay period, your employer can use your average daily pay instead. At $30 an hour for an 8-hour day, that is $240 a day, or $720 for 3 days, before tax. It is paid in your normal pay cycle, though not for time covered by ACC weekly compensation.
A bereavement on a public holiday you would have worked is treated as a paid, unworked public holiday: you get your relevant daily pay, not time and a half or a day in lieu, and no bereavement leave is used. If you are about to go on annual holidays, or are already on them, your employer must let you take bereavement leave instead.
What changes in 2028
The Employment Leave Act 2026 has passed into law and replaces the Holidays Act on 6 August 2028. Employment New Zealand says it will change how leave, including bereavement leave, is earned, taken and paid. Until then, the rules on this page apply, and employers cannot start following the new law early. Our guide to leave entitlements in New Zealand covers every kind of leave, and what the change means.
Your Career in jobtracker.co.nz works out the date six months after you started, when sick, bereavement and family violence leave begin, and its Leave section counts the bereavement leave you have taken in the last twelve months. You can see both in the demo, which needs no account.
Know when your leave begins
Your Career at jobtracker.co.nz keeps the dates that matter in your job, including the day six months in when bereavement leave begins, and a record of the leave you take, in your own account; choose the Career plan, and the first 7 days are free, with nothing charged if you cancel before then. If you would rather look around first, the demo opens a full job hunt and a year of Your Career, with no account.
Create your accountA card is needed to start the trial, and there is one free trial per person and per card.