Leave for family reasons – is the allowance per child, or parent?

The basic leave for family reasons allowance depends on the age of the child, such that parents have access to:

• 12 days of leave per child under the age of four
• 18 days of leave per child between the age of 4 and 13
• 5 days of leave for hospitalised children between the age of 13 and 18

The leave is subject to presenting a medical certificate, i.e. the allowance days can only be used if a doctor has issued a certificate stating that a parent needs to stay off work to take care of the child.

Also important to note is that the leave is for the entire period or age range – such that 12 days are available for the first four years of a child's life, and an additional 18 days for the subsequent nine years.

The allowance is not per year, so you do not get, for example, 12 days for the first year of the child's existence, and an additional 12 days the second year. Rather, it is 12 days for the entire first four years of the child's life. However, a new petition has recently hit the required number of signatures for debate in the chamber of deputies, asking that the allowance be made per year rather, in effect quadrupling the number of days available in the first four years of a child's life.

Per child, or per parent?

The most common area of confusion as regards leave for family reasons is whether the allowance is per child or per child and parent – that is to say, are the 12 or 18 days (depending on the age of the child) divided between the parents, or does each parent get 12 (or 18) days.

The way this is explained on the Guichet and CNS websites is indeed slightly confusing, as it says that 12 days of leave is available per child.

In reality, both parents are entitled to a separate pool of 12 or 18 days (again depending on the age of the child, as above) each for the period, meaning that they have 24 or 36 days of leave for family reasons available between them per child.

The limitation here is that the leave is only available to working parents, meaning that in situations where only one parent is in employment (or self-employed), only that parent may benefit from leave for family reasons.

Examples

Scenario 1: 2 workings parents
Both parents receive an individual pool of 12 working days to be used between ages 0 and 4. Once the child turns 4, any days left over from the earlier period are removed and 18 new days are given per parent, to be used between ages 4 and 13.

A total of 24 days are thus available while the child is aged between 0 and 4, and a total of 36 days between ages 4 and 13. The days cannot be transferred, and each parent must use their own leave as needed.

Scenario 2: 1 working parent and one stay-at-home parent
The working parent receives a pool of 12 days to be used between ages 0 and 4. Once the child turns 4, any days from the earlier period are removed and 18 new days are given to the working parent, to be used between ages 4 and 13.

No days are granted to the unemployed/not working parent, and the working parent's leave cannot be transferred to the non-working parent.

Scenario 3: 1 single working parent
In the instance that you are a single parent/legal guardian with no second parent in the picture, and under the assumption that you are working, you are entitled to 12 days to be used between ages 0 and 4, and 18 days between ages 4 and 13.

There is no additional dispensation for single parents.

Check remaining days

Several readers asked us how they can find out how many days of leave for family reasons they have left. This can be done via MyGuichet (also available as an app for Android and Apple).

Simply log in, then navigate to "my data" → "health insurance fund" → "leave for family reasons".

Here you can see how many days you have left for your child (or each child individually if you have several), what the initial pool of days was, and how many days have been used.

On the app, "my data" is called "my personal data", but the other steps remain identical.