Bereavement leave in Portugal: days by relative, and whether they are paid

The law speaks in degrees, people speak in family

Someone who has just lost a relative and needs to know how many days they may be absent asks by the name of the relationship: a father-in-law, a grandmother, a brother-in-law. The Labour Code answers in another language. Article 251(1) speaks of a «relative or in-law in the first degree of the direct line» and of «another relative or in-law in the direct line or in the second degree of the collateral line»¹, and that has to be translated before it yields a number.

Here is the translation. The DIRECT LINE is ancestors and descendants: parents and children in the first degree, grandparents and grandchildren in the second, great-grandparents and great-grandchildren in the third. The COLLATERAL LINE is people who share an ancestor without descending from each other: siblings in the second degree, uncles, aunts, nephews and nieces in the third, cousins in the fourth. IN-LAWS are the spouse relatives, at the same degree they hold for the spouse: parents-in-law are first-degree direct line, siblings-in-law second-degree collateral.

With the map in hand, the article becomes readable.

The three brackets, and where the right stops

Note two details in paragraph (c), because they decide the real cases. The first is that the direct line carries NO DEGREE LIMIT: the paragraph says «another relative or in-law in the direct line», full stop, so a great-grandmother and a great-grandchild fall in the two-day bracket exactly as a grandmother does. The second is that the collateral line does carry a limit, and it is the second degree. That is where siblings sit and, by affinity, siblings-in-law. And that is where the article stops.

Which is why the answer for an uncle, a nephew or a cousin is «no days». That is not an omission on this page nor a narrow reading: it is where the legislator drew the line, at the second degree of the collateral line, leaving the third and the fourth outside. Anyone absent for them is, under the Labour Code, taking an unjustified absence, with everything that implies and that we come to below.

Two words that change the arithmetic

The current wording of the article, given by Law 13/2023, says «UP TO 20 days», «UP TO five days» and «UP TO two days»¹. These are ceilings, not credits. Taking three days for a parent spends three justified days; two are not left over for another occasion, and taking none banks nothing.

The second word is «CONSECUTIVE», and that one costs money to anyone who misses it. The days run as calendar days from the death, not as working days. It is the opposite of holiday, which article 238(2) counts expressly in working days¹. Five days for a parent who dies on a Thursday end on the following Monday, because Saturday and Sunday count towards the period. The same five days after a Monday death cover the whole working week.

This is the most frequent reason people need more days than the law grants. Not because five days is a short time, but because they are not five days of work.

They are paid, and the certainty sits in two articles

The question that follows «how many days» is always «will it be deducted?». It will not, and the certainty does not come from custom, it comes from two articles read together.

Article 255(1) says a justified absence «does not affect any right of the worker, save as provided in the following paragraph». That following paragraph is a closed list of the absences that, though justified, «entail loss of pay»: illness where the worker has social protection for illness, a workplace accident where there is a benefit or insurance, the assistance in article 252, the absences in article 249(2)(f) and (l) beyond 30 days a year, and absences authorised by the employer¹.

Bereavement absences under article 251 are not on that list. So the day is ordinary pay: it appears on the payslip, counts towards seniority, counts towards holiday and towards the holiday and Christmas allowances, and carries income tax and the 11 % employee social security share like any other working day.

What nobody explains: one extra day can cost three

This is where tables of bereavement days stop being useful. If the days needed exceed the paragraph ceiling, the remainder are unjustified absences, and article 256(1) is explicit about the price: «the unjustified absence constitutes a breach of the duty of attendance and entails loss of the pay corresponding to the period of absence, which is not counted in the worker seniority»¹. That is already two losses, the money and the seniority.

Paragraph 3 adds a third, and it is the one that surprises. Where the unjustified absence is «immediately before or after a day or half-day of rest or a public holiday», paragraph 2 makes it a serious infringement and paragraph 3 requires that «the period of absence counted for the loss of pay provided in paragraph 1 covers the days or half-days of rest or public holidays immediately before or after the day of absence»¹.

In euros, on a 1,200 € salary where a day is worth 40.00 €: an unjustified Friday does not cost 40.00 €, it costs 120.00 €, because it takes the Saturday and the Sunday with it. The same day mid-week costs 40.00 €. If you have to be absent one day beyond the ceiling and can choose which, choose one that touches neither the weekend nor a public holiday.

The article 257 way out, and why it is not enough

There is an alternative few workers know about and the employer cannot refuse. Article 257(1)(a) allows the pay loss to be «replaced by renouncing the same number of holiday days, up to the limit permitted by article 238(5), by express declaration of the worker communicated to the employer». Paragraph 3 says «the employer may not oppose the worker request», paragraph 4 makes refusal a serious administrative offence, and paragraph 2 guarantees that the swap «does not entail a reduction of the holiday allowance corresponding to the vested holiday period»¹. Rest is traded for cash and the allowance stays intact.

The limit sits in the article it invokes. Article 238(5) only allows renouncing «holiday days exceeding 20 working days», and paragraph 1 of the same article fixes the minimum annual period at 22 working days¹. The arithmetic follows immediately: on a statutory holiday year this way out is worth TWO DAYS, once a year. It does not even cover a badly placed Friday, which costs three. A worker with 25 holiday days under a collective agreement has five days of headroom.

Gestational bereavement: three days, and for the father too

Law 13/2023 added article 38-A to the Labour Code, recent enough to be missing from almost everything written about bereavement leave. Paragraph 1 gives the worker, «where the leave provided in the preceding article does not apply», the right to be absent «for reasons of gestational bereavement for up to three consecutive days», and paragraph 2 gives the father «the right to be absent from work for up to three consecutive days» when the mother takes that leave or that absence².

Paragraph 3 asks only that the employer be informed and that proof be produced «as soon as possible» through a declaration from a hospital, a health centre or a medical certificate, and paragraph 4 makes a breach a serious administrative offence. Where the pregnancy-termination leave of article 38 does apply, that regime governs instead, with its own social security benefit.

What is out of scope

These figures are the statutory FLOOR. Article 250 makes the regime mandatory but allows improvement: «the provisions on the grounds justifying absences and their duration may not be set aside by a collective labour regulation instrument [...] or by an employment contract»¹. So your collective agreement may grant more days, or grant days for relatives the law does not cover, and it is worth reading before assuming the minimum.

Also out of scope is the public-sector regime, which runs under the General Law on Public Service Employment, and the other justified absences in article 249(2), which have rules of their own: the 15 consecutive days for a wedding, illness, which has its own calculator because social security pays it rather than the employer, and urgent assistance to a child, grandchild or member of the household under articles 49, 50 and 252.