Leave for family reasons at your own expense: who is eligible, duration

Author of the article: Roman Gavrilov Last modified: January 2021 11148

Leave for family reasons is provided on the basis of the Labor Code of the Russian Federation and local acts that the employer adopts independently. The list of specific situations that may become the basis for granting an unscheduled break at work is indicated by labor legislation. The head of the enterprise or other authorized person has the right to grant leave for reasons that he considers sufficient to allow the employee not to appear at work for some time.

Reasons for taking family leave

Russian legislation does not prohibit taking several days of leave without pay to resolve your personal issues. In this case, the employer may not allow the employee to go on vacation. But in practice, the parties almost always manage to reach an agreement, and the employee can rest for several days.

If the reason is serious, then management should provide several days of leave.

The nuances of providing leave for family reasons are regulated in Article 128 of the Labor Code of the Russian Federation. But there is not a single definition of the concept of “good reason”. The law only states that such circumstances may include family circumstances. By law, the employer is required to provide 5 working days off under the following circumstances:

• birth of an employee's child. Such a vacation is simply necessary for a young father to meet a new family member and get used to a new routine;
• Marriage registration. In this case, the employee can take a leave of absence from work for 5 days before the celebration, during the wedding or after;
• tragic events in the employee’s family - the death of a close relative. Such a vacation is necessary to resolve all the nuances of the funeral and other integral procedures, as well as for internal recuperation after the loss of a loved one.

The concept of a close relative is defined by the law of our country. Close relatives are considered:

1. husband or wife;
2. children and parents;
3. grandchildren, grandparents;
4. sisters and brothers.

In addition, the employer has the right to independently indicate in the documents other reasons for providing employees with additional vacation days. For example, some companies are ready to offer mothers of first-graders a 5-day vacation. Basically, employers indicate the following additional reasons for providing several days of vacation:

• the need to provide assistance during the illness of a close relative;
• seeing off a relative to the army;
• any emergency that occurred in the employee’s family;
• holidays for an employee’s child, if it is impossible to leave him alone at home;
• employee training - session and passing exams.

In addition to valid reasons that may arise in every family, there are also categories of citizens to whom the employer is obliged to provide several days a year as additional leave:

1. participants of the Great Patriotic War;
2. disabled people;
3. pensioners;
4. close relatives of military personnel, firefighters, rescuers who died during service or due to an illness received in service.

Everyone should know about this so that in unforeseen situations they understand what they can count on. If these categories of citizens are denied leave, the employer may suffer serious financial losses. If an employee files a complaint about the failure to provide additional vacation days to the labor inspectorate, an inspection will be scheduled. After it, the organization will have to pay a significant fine for violating the rights of employees.

Documents to confirm the valid nature of the leave

Supporting documents are papers provided to your superiors after the fact, when you have already gone on vacation and have undertaken to officially confirm the reason for going on vacation.

The employer may require the following supporting documentation.

Table 3. List of supporting documentation

Is it necessary to confirm the reason for leave?

If an employee requests additional leave for a valid reason, then confirmation from him is not required. To do this, you need to write an application addressed to the director of the organization, indicating the reason for the need to provide days off, as well as the period of absence from work. An application, a sample for 2021, can be found on our website or asked from the accounting department of your organization.

If an employee indicates other reasons why he asks for several days off, then management has the right to demand supporting documents. These include:

• a certificate from a medical institution proving that the relative needs care;
• a copy of your birth, marriage or death certificate;
• a copy of the postal document confirming the death of a relative;
• a document from the registry office confirming the date of marriage;
• a certificate from a kindergarten or school health worker confirming the closure of the educational institution for quarantine;
• a certificate from the educational institution about the date of the session.

Preparing an application

Time off at one's own expense for family reasons is considered by management only after the employee submits an application in the prescribed form. In addition, if an unscheduled day off is expected due to circumstances provided for by the Labor Code, the employer has the right to request documents that confirm the likelihood of these circumstances.

List of documents

Taking into account the above, the following documents may additionally be required:

• a certificate from the registry office about the upcoming marriage;
• an extract from a medical institution about the death of a relative;
• a certificate from a medical institution about the upcoming birth;
• confirmation certificate from the blood transfusion station confirming the fulfillment of the donor obligation. It should be noted that in this case, a certificate is issued by default after the donor goes through the blood donation procedure. Most often, an exemption from work is also issued for the next day.

The presence of such documents is not required, but the employer has the right to request them. In addition, some documents may be needed in other cases when an employee requires time off for family reasons, but these situations are not spelled out in the Labor Code.

Rules for drawing up an application

Standard time off for family reasons can be roughly divided into three parts. Some companies/enterprises have forms, so the employee only needs to enter his data - reason, full name, date and sign.

The application is drawn up on an A4 sheet. The first part of the text takes up about a third of the sheet, namely its right side. In other words, a “cap” is drawn up. In this part, the employee must enter the following data (in the order in which they are listed in the list):

• last name, first name and patronymic of the general director or immediate manager (department, division), if he has the right to resolve such issues;
• last name, first name and patronymic of the person submitting the application;
• the applicant’s position, department/division affiliation;
• full name of the organization in which the applicant actually works.

At this point, the design of the “header” can be considered complete. Next, you should fill out the application itself. This is done as follows:

• By
• then, retreating 2-3 centimeters, follows the body of the appeal, that is, the main text with the following content: “I ask you to grant me an extraordinary day off (using the wording “time off” is not entirely correct from a legislative point of view) “date” for a reason (should be brief but clear explain the reason for the alleged absence from work).

In fact, this is what the statement itself is written on. If the employee expects to be absent not a full working day, but a certain number of hours, then in addition to the date, you need to indicate the hours during which he will not be at the workplace.

The third part of the statement occupies the lower part, directly below the text of the statement. The date when the application was written, the last name, first name, patronymic of the employee and his personal signature are entered here.

It should be noted that most often the application does not use the legally correct wording, but is written in simpler language: “I request time off for family reasons in connection with (reason).” If there are documents that confirm the reason for absence, then they must be attached to the application itself. As practice shows, such requests are approved more often than not without a specific explanation.

A schematic sample application can be presented in the form of the following table:

Writing such a statement is very simple. You can use the application template on our website (). Check out an example of a completed application ()

How long can you go on vacation?

By law, family leave can only last 5 working days. But the employee can agree on individual terms with his superiors and take more days off. In this case, the duration of the vacation must be indicated in the application.

In addition, there are certain categories of citizens who can take unpaid leave at any time, and management cannot refuse them:

• 14 days off are given to old-age pensioners;
• relatives of deceased servicemen can count on the same leave;
• disabled people are entitled to 6 days leave;
• Parents or guardians of disabled children can take days off by prior agreement with the director of the organization.

Application for leave at your own expense: sample, writing rules

An organization cannot force an employee to go on leave without pay if there is a suspension of work activities. The initiator of such leave can only be an employee for some personal reasons. Involuntary leave without pay is illegal.

If an employee has official confirmation of his disability, but continues to work, by law he can take leave without pay for a total of 2 months per year. Employees who are studying at a higher or secondary specialized educational institution have the right to receive leave at their own expense, provided that this institution is accredited.

Additional leave for military personnel

Military personnel are ordinary people, and various events also happen in their family that may require additional leave.

According to Article 11 of Federal Law No. 76, military personnel may also have additional leave for family emergencies. The period of such release from service is 10 days. The right to sign an order for additional leave is vested exclusively in the unit commander. It is he who decides how valid the reason for requesting temporary suspension from service is.

Causes and duration

The legislation provides for five days leave without pay if the following circumstances exist:

• the birth of a child in an employee’s family (unpaid leave is granted to the father of the child, since a different type of leave is provided for women);
• death of a close relative;
• marriage registration if the employee himself gets married.

At each enterprise, the collective agreement may establish a different duration of such leave.

By decision of the employer and application of the employee, it can also be extended.

Military personnel are granted leave for up to 10 days in the event of the death or serious health condition of a close relative (Article 11 of the Federal Law on the Status of Military Personnel). Also, in accordance with this article, he is provided with days to travel to the vacation spot and back.

Pensioners can count on an extension of vacation up to 14 days, WWII participants - up to 35 days.

Can the bosses refuse and not let me go on forced leave to do my business?

If an employee asks for leave, the reason for which is specified in the labor code or in a legal act, then the management cannot refuse him this. If the director did not sign the application and refused to provide days off, then the employee must act on the basis of the law:

1. write an official application for leave without pay;
2. give it to the secretaries and demand that the incoming document be registered;
3. management is obliged to grant a shift refusal to the employee’s request;
4. file a complaint with the labor inspectorate, and attach a photocopy of the application and refusal.
5. wait until the check is completed.

Of course, it is better not to spoil the relationship with the employer and not to immediately submit complaint documents to organizations for the protection of labor of citizens. The first thing you need to do is try to talk to your boss in person, citing the norms and laws of labor law.

In cases where vacation is issued without circumstances regulated by law, management may not sign the application and refuse days off.

Sample application for absence from school

Here is a sample application we have compiled based on the options proposed in different schools.

Director (your educational institution) Full name

I ask you to allow my (my) son (daughter), full name, student (student)______ "__" class, to be absent from classes from ____ to ____ due to the unfavorable epidemiological situation. I take responsibility for the life and health of the child during his absence.

______Signature ___________full name

Decor

Registration of leave for family reasons begins with writing a corresponding application, which is submitted to the secretary or director of the organization. The application must indicate the reason why additional days off are requested. It is also mandatory to indicate the period during which the employee will not be on site.

If the director has signed the application, then it is sent to the organization’s personnel department, where an order is created in form T6, this document is signed by the head of the personnel department and a note is made in the employee’s personal file.

The order can be given to the employee for review. After reading, he must sign it, indicating that he has read the document. After this, the employee can safely go on vacation.

Filling out a time sheet for time off

In accordance with labor legislation, the labor activity of each employee is subject to mandatory recording. For these purposes, forms T-12 and T-13 are provided. Both formats can be filled out either in their original form or modified in accordance with the needs of the organization. Correctly filling out the timesheet is important not only for the correct calculation of employee salaries, but also for the relevant government bodies that check for violations of labor laws.

All officially registered time off is also recorded in the standard report card. Information is entered in accordance with uniform rules using alphabetic or numeric codes. Information about the encoding used is contained on the title page of the T-12 form. Since there are no special legal requirements for encryption, it can be changed taking into account the specifics of the organization’s work. The second page is used directly to display rest data.

Time off in the time sheet T-12

Is it possible to keep wages during vacation days?

According to the law, additional days off for family reasons do not imply continued pay. The organization does not make contributions to the Pension Fund for the employee at this moment, so you should not count on payment for these days.

But not all organizations adhere to this rule. The management itself can decide whether to grant leave with pay to the employee or not. The organization’s documents may state that leave for serious reasons can be paid. In this case, the employee’s wages for the weekend are calculated on a general basis, based on the average wage.

In addition, the organization may provide compensation in the form of monetary assistance or a gift.

Sometimes an employee may ask to keep his salary during forced additional leave if he has overtime. That is, the employee worked for several days on official leave.

If we consider this issue at the legislative level, it is worth noting that the concept of leave with pay is not spelled out in more than one act. Labor laws only talk about basic holidays that are paid:

1. annual for planned vacation;
2. additional leave with pay;
3. study leave.

Moreover, each type of vacation has its own payment rules. In the employment contract of each organization you can find all the nuances and rules for granting vacations and pay.

Let's look at an example: according to the law, days off for a wedding do not imply the possibility of maintaining the employee's pay, as with leave due to the birth of a child. But the organization’s contract may indicate otherwise - maintaining wages for a period of several days. If we consider study leave, then the preservation of wages can only be for students who study by correspondence. Those who study full-time may not count on receiving money after such a vacation.

Is it allowed to extend vacation on non-working holidays?

The duration of an employee’s unpaid leave is determined by the bilateral consent of him and the employer. The exception is cases when such a right is delegated by law. Calculated in calendar days. But here, unlike the rules for registering regular paid leave, there are some nuances.

Leave without pay for the employee is provided in calendar days for the entire agreed period and is not limited to an upper limit of days. Given this fact, there is no mandatory rule obliging the employer to postpone days that fall on official holidays or weekends. Only calendar days that were indicated in the agreed statement will be counted.

Remember, free periods of absence from work are provided exactly for the period specified in the application and are not extended. Even if it falls on holidays or official days off.

Exams

Let's continue to think about how to skip work. The next option is only suitable for those who study somewhere. After all, exams are a good reason for not showing up for work. You can use this. It doesn’t matter what kind of exam we are talking about - a university exam or, for example, passing a driver’s license. The fact remains that you will need to spend a lot of time submitting. This means that you won’t be able to come to work.

True, this approach does not always work. It is usually used either in a real exam or in the case of “skillful hands”. That is, when you can falsify proof of passing an exam paper. Rest assured, the employer will definitely ask you for it. And if there is no evidence, you will be given absenteeism. Moreover, some companies impose a fine for failure to show up for work. Please take this into account.

Deadlines

Based on the provisions of Russian legislation, if this is administrative leave at his own expense, the employee can take:

• 5 days off - if a child is born, a wedding is planned, if a close relative has died.
• If a citizen acts as a donor: the time period that doctors allow to donate donor material. They also give one extra day so that the person can regain his strength after the procedure.
• If an employee receives an old-age pension, but everything is still working - two calendar weeks.
• If we are talking about a WWII participant – 35 days.
• If this is an applicant – from 10 to 120 days.
• If disabled – 2 months.

Time off can also be taken as a planned vacation. Let’s say that if an employee was given two weeks off, his paid vacation will decrease by exactly 14 days.