"How many days of bereavement leave?" has a one-line answer: five. That line has been incomplete since 19 February 2025. On that day the Labour Law amendments issued by Royal Decree M/44 of 8/2/1446H came into force. They added a case the text did not cover and fixed a time window for paternity leave.
The costly mistakes are not in the number of days. They are in the day the count starts, in the window that closes, and in the cases that most search results leave out.
This page is for the people who apply these entitlements: the HR manager, the person who runs payroll, and the employee who wants to know exactly what they are owed.
The short table: duration, article, start day
| Case | Duration | Pay | Article | What decides it |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| The worker's marriage | 5 days | Full | 113 | Counted from the date of the event |
| Death of a spouse, an ascendant or a descendant | 5 days | Full | 113 | From the date of death |
| Death of a brother or sister | 3 days | Full | 113 as amended by M/44 | New since 19 February 2025 |
| Birth of the worker's child | 3 days | Full | 113 | Must be taken within 7 days of the birth |
| Death of a Muslim female worker's husband (iddah) | Not less than 4 months and 10 days | Full | 160 | Extends unpaid until delivery if she is pregnant |
| Death of a non-Muslim female worker's husband | 15 days | Full | 160 | |
| Hajj | 10 to 15 days, Eid al-Adha holiday included | Full | 114 | Once per service, after two continuous years |
| Examinations | The actual exam days | Full for a non-repeated year | 115 | Repeated year: leave is owed, unpaid |
Ascendants are parents and grandparents. Descendants are children and grandchildren. Several widely shared Arabic pages swap the two terms and call parents "descendants". The correct meaning changes the result: a brother is neither an ascendant nor a descendant, which is why the sibling case needed its own text.
What Decree M/44 changed in Article 113
Before the amendment, the text gave five days for marriage and for the death of a spouse, ascendant or descendant, three days for a birth, and let the employer ask for supporting documents. Brothers and sisters were not mentioned. A worker who lost a sibling used annual leave or took unpaid absence.
The Ministry of Human Resources and Social Development set out the amended rules in three points:
- Three days at full pay on the death of a brother or sister. These days do not come out of annual leave.
- Three days for a birth "within seven days of the date of birth". The window is part of the entitlement, not a recommendation.
- All of these leaves are "counted from the date of the event", and the employer may ask for proof of the case.
Practical warning: the "Leaves" page on the ministry's own website still states, as of this article's publication, that maternity leave is ten weeks, and it does not mention sibling bereavement. The same amendment raised maternity leave to twelve weeks. Do not copy your company's leave policy from that page. Work from the amended text of the law.
"From the date of the event": days employees lose without noticing
"Counted from the date of the event" means the count starts on the day of the death, marriage or birth, not on the next working day. The prevailing reading among practitioners is that weekly rest days and public holidays falling inside the period are part of it and are not made up.
Example: an employee's father dies on Thursday evening. The five days start on Thursday, so Friday and Saturday fall inside them. The employee is back at work on Tuesday, having missed only three working days. An HR system that starts the count on Sunday grants five working days. That is not generosity; it is a gap between payroll and the law, and it shows up in any audit.
The opposite case is worse. An employee learns of a relative's death back home two days after it happened. The count started on the day of death, so only three of the five days remain. If your company's policy is more generous than that, write it down, because the law on its own does not extend the window.
The seven-day window for paternity leave
The three paternity days are tied to the birth and must be taken within seven days of it. A father who asks for them two weeks later no longer has an entitlement to claim.
The same mistake happens in both directions:
- A system that grants the leave whenever it is requested. Payroll no longer matches the text, and paid days have no legal basis.
- A system that silently rejects the request. The employee sees a zero balance with no explanation and only learns about the window after it has closed.
The administrative fix is simple: tell employees about the window when they join, and make the request form show the last permitted day as soon as the date of birth is entered.
Iddah leave: 130 days, unless your contracts define the month
Article 160 gives a Muslim female worker whose husband dies leave at full pay for not less than four months and ten days from the date of death. A non-Muslim female worker gets fifteen days at full pay. If she is pregnant, she may extend the leave unpaid until she gives birth. During this period she may not work for anyone other than her employer.
Four practical notes:
- "Four months and ten days" is 130 days unless your contracts say otherwise. Article 2 of the Labour Law defines a month as thirty days "unless the employment contract or the work regulations provide otherwise". If yours define calendar months, compute the end date from the date of death instead, which can run to 133 days. Either way, record the end date in the employee's file.
- A birth ends the iddah. Article 160 says she may not use what remains of the iddah leave after she gives birth. If she delivers inside the period, the paid iddah stops on the day of delivery and maternity leave takes over.
- "Not less than" makes it a floor. A policy that grants more is lawful; a policy that grants less is a violation.
- Iddah is not Article 113's five days plus something. Article 113 opens with "subject to the leaves of working women specified under this Law", and the most consistent reading is that iddah is the leave specified for her in this case. If your company wants to grant the five days on top, write that into the policy explicitly.
Hajj leave: the Eid days are inside the grant, not on top of it
Article 114 gives the worker paid leave of not less than ten and not more than fifteen days including the Eid al-Adha holiday, to perform Hajj once during their service if they have not performed it before. The worker must have spent at least two continuous years with the employer. The employer may set how many workers receive this leave each year according to the needs of the work.
"Including the Eid al-Adha holiday" is where the money goes wrong. Eid days are already paid to every employee as a public holiday. If you grant fifteen days of Hajj leave and they overlap four days of Eid, the additional cost is eleven days, not fifteen. A system that treats Hajj and Eid as two separate lines inflates the leave provision by up to four days per pilgrim.
Exam leave: conditional on prior approval
Article 115 gives a worker enrolled in an educational institution full-pay leave for the actual exam days, if the year is not a repeated one. For a repeated year the leave is owed but unpaid. The entitlement assumes the employer approved the enrolment. A worker who studied without the company's knowledge cannot rely on this article.
An audit checklist for HR
Before you approve your company's leave policy or configure payroll, check the following:
- Sibling bereavement exists as a separate leave type of three days, and does not come out of the annual balance.
- The count starts on the date of the event, not on the date of the request and not on the first working day.
- The paternity leave form shows the last day inside the seven-day window and explains why a later request is refused.
- Iddah is stored as a computed end date, with a path to extend it unpaid until delivery.
- Hajj leave has the days falling on the Eid al-Adha holiday subtracted before the cost is computed.
- Supporting documents (death certificate, marriage contract or birth certificate) are requested and kept with the request, because the text allows it.
- All of these leaves are separate from annual leave. Review how the annual leave balance is calculated so that not a single day is deducted from it because of them.
For the related leaves: sick leave and the Article 117 ladder, and maternity leave after its increase to 12 weeks under Article 151.
For engineering teams building this logic into a payroll system: a special leave engine in TypeScript implements Articles 113, 114, 115 and 160 with code and tests, including the paternity window and subtracting the Eid days from Hajj leave.
Work out what these days are worth
Every one of these leave days is paid at full wage, so its value equals your daily wage times the number of days. The free Saudi Labour Rights Calculator computes your daily wage on the correct base, and the leave calculator computes the annual balance that none of the leaves above should touch.
Does your payroll system deduct sibling bereavement from the annual balance, or grant paternity leave after its window has closed? Noqta's team reviews the leave rules in your system against the amended text of the law and identifies where they differ. Contact us for a free diagnostic.
Sources: Saudi Labour Law, Articles 113, 114, 115 and 160 (Bureau of Experts at the Council of Ministers); Royal Decree M/44 of 8/2/1446H, in force 19 February 2025; statement by the Ministry of Human Resources and Social Development on Article 113 leaves, reported by Ajel newspaper on 20 October 2024.