Kasambahay Law Separation Pay: What You Actually Owe When It Ends

TL;DR: The Kasambahay Law has no separation pay. What it has is an indemnity of 15 days of work, owed only when you dismiss a kasambahay without one of the just causes in Section 34. At the ₱7,800 NCR rate that is ₱3,900. On top of that you owe unpaid wages to the last day worked, pro-rated 13th month pay, and a certificate of employment within five days of her asking.

Most pages on this topic are wrong in the same way. They take the Labor Code idea of separation pay, one month per year of service for redundancy or closure, and paste it onto a kasambahay. That benefit does not exist here.

Republic Act No. 10361 repealed the old househelper chapter of the Labor Code outright. Domestic work now runs on its own rules. Those rules protect a kasambahay in a narrower way than the Labor Code protects an office worker, and families who assume otherwise end up either overpaying out of guilt or underpaying out of ignorance. Both happen a lot.

Separation pay is not what the kasambahay law gives you

Under the Labor Code, an employee let go for an authorized cause such as redundancy gets separation pay computed on years of service. There is no equivalent in RA 10361. If you close the household, move abroad, or simply cannot afford the salary any more, the statute does not scale a payout to how long she has been with you. A kasambahay of eleven years and a kasambahay of eleven months get the same number.

What Section 32 gives instead is an indemnity. The wording is short and it matters:

If the domestic worker is unjustly dismissed, the domestic worker shall be paid the compensation already earned plus the equivalent of fifteen (15) days work by way of indemnity.

That is the whole benefit. Fifteen days of work, once, flat. It is triggered by dismissing her for a reason that is not on the Section 34 list, not by the ending of the job itself.

The commentary from Respicio & Co. makes the same distinction and adds a useful point. If you want a real severance benefit for a long-serving kasambahay, write it into the contract. A promise in the contract is enforceable. A vague sense that she deserves something is not, and it tends to collapse into an argument on the day she leaves.

For the wider picture of what the law requires while she is still working, read our RA 10361 explainer. This guide only covers the exit.

The notice rule, and when it does not apply

Section 32 sets two different exits, and families mix them up constantly.

If the contract has no fixed term, either side may give notice five days before the intended last day. That is the ordinary no-fault exit. She can use it and so can you.

If the contract has a fixed term, that five-day notice does not exist. Neither side gets a unilateral no-fault exit before the term runs out. The statute allows only two clean ways out early. One is a just cause under Section 33 or Section 34. The other is mutual agreement, and the third paragraph of Section 32 says that one has to be in writing.

So a six-month contract signed in March cannot be cancelled in May just because your circumstances changed. Do that and it is an unjust dismissal with the indemnity attached.

One correction while we are here. The five-day notice in the statute says give notice. It does not say written notice. Give it in writing anyway, with her signature on your copy, because the person who cannot prove what was said is the person who loses at conciliation.

When a kasambahay can walk out the same day

Section 33 lists six causes that let her end the relationship immediately, no notice, no forfeiture:

1. Verbal or emotional abuse by the employer or any member of the household.
2. Inhuman treatment, including physical abuse, by the employer or any member of the household.
3. Commission of a crime or offense against her by the employer or any member of the household.
4. Violation by the employer of the terms of the contract or of the standards in the law.
5. Any disease prejudicial to her health, the employer's health, or the household's.
6. Other causes analogous to the above.

Item four is the one families underestimate. Paying below the regional minimum, skipping the SSS and PhilHealth registration, withholding the payslip, refusing the weekly rest day, holding her passport or PSA birth certificate. Each of those is a contract and standards violation, and each of them lets her leave that afternoon with every peso she has earned.

A kasambahay who leaves for one of these reasons keeps all unpaid wages and owes nothing back. The law does not give her an indemnity on top, which is a real gap. Her remedy for the underlying violation is a complaint, not a payout.

When you can dismiss without owing the indemnity

Section 34 lists seven just causes:

1. Misconduct or willful disobedience of a lawful work order.
2. Gross or habitual neglect or inefficiency in performing duties.
3. Fraud or willful breach of the trust you placed in her.
4. Commission of a crime or offense against you or an immediate family member.
5. Violation of the contract terms or the standards in the law.
6. Any disease prejudicial to her health, yours, or the household's.
7. Other causes analogous to the above.

Dismiss for one of these and you owe her earned wages and nothing more. Dismiss for anything else and the 15 days indemnity attaches, regardless of how reasonable your reason felt.

Two grounds are explicitly off the table. Rule VII, Section 4 of the implementing rules says pregnancy and marriage of the kasambahay are not valid grounds for termination. Firing a pregnant yaya is an unjust dismissal, full stop, and it is the single most common version of this mistake in Metro Manila households.

Be honest with yourself about the difference between a just cause and a bad fit. She is slow with the ironing. The lola does not warm to her. She keeps using the front stairs. None of that is gross neglect or willful disobedience. If you want her gone anyway, that is your call, but budget the indemnity.

What you owe in each exit scenario

| How the job ended | Unpaid wages | Pro-rated 13th month | 15 days indemnity | Deployment costs | | ------------------------------------------------------------- | ---------------------------------------- | -------------------- | ----------------- | -------------------------------- | | Fixed term simply ran out | Paid in full | Yes | No | No | | She resigned with five days notice, no fixed term | Paid in full | Yes | No | No | | She left for a Section 33 cause such as abuse or unpaid wages | Paid in full | Yes | No | No | | She walked out mid-term with no cause and no notice | Up to 15 days of unpaid salary forfeited | Yes | No | Recoverable if within six months | | You dismissed her for a Section 34 just cause | Paid in full | Yes | No | No | | You dismissed her for any other reason | Paid in full | Yes | Yes | No |

Three notes on that table, because each one is a place people get burned.

The forfeiture is a cap, not a fine. Section 28 forfeits unpaid salary due, up to the equivalent of 15 days of work. If she is paid current through her last day, there is nothing sitting there to forfeit and you cannot invoice her for the difference.

Deployment expenses are narrow. The implementing rules define them as the cost of moving her from her place of origin to your house, meaning transport, meals, communication, and small incidentals. Advances and loans are excluded by definition, so a salary advance cannot be relabeled as deployment cost to claw it back. You may recover deployment expenses only if she leaves without justifiable reason inside the first six months.

The 13th month survives everything. Rule IV, Section 8 of the implementing rules requires it to be paid not later than 24 December or upon separation from employment. The forfeiture in Section 28 applies to unpaid salary, not to this benefit.

Working out final pay at ₱7,800

Wage Order No. NCR-DW-06 set the Metro Manila kasambahay minimum at ₱7,800 a month, effective 7 February 2026. Rates elsewhere are lower and move on their own schedules, from ₱5,500 in BARMM upward, so check the current NWPC summary for your region before you compute anything.

Take a live-in kasambahay in Quezon City on exactly ₱7,800. She started 3 February 2026. On 20 August the family moves to Cebu and lets her go. Moving house is not a Section 34 cause, so this is an unjust dismissal.

The statute never sets a daily divisor for a monthly wage. Households normally divide by 30, and that is what this example does. Say so in the contract and the argument never starts.

• Unpaid wages. She was paid through 31 July. She worked 1 to 20 August. ₱7,800 ÷ 30 × 20 = ₱5,200.
• Pro-rated 13th month. Basic salary earned in 2026 is ₱6,760 for February from the 3rd, ₱39,000 for March through July, and ₱5,200 for August. That is ₱50,960, divided by 12 = ₱4,246.67. The method is in our 13th month pay guide.
• Indemnity. Fifteen days of work out of a monthly wage is half a month. ₱3,900.
• Total final pay: ₱13,346.67.

Now change one fact. If she had been dismissed for stealing from the household, a Section 34 cause, the indemnity drops off and the total is ₱9,446.67. That single line is the whole financial difference between a just and an unjust dismissal.

What you cannot take out of the last envelope

Board and lodging are not deductions. The implementing rules oblige you to provide three adequate meals a day, humane sleeping conditions with privacy for a live-in arrangement, and first aid. Those are your costs. Charging them back at exit is a wage violation.

Unused leave is not cash. Section 29 gives five days of service incentive leave after one year of service, and says plainly that unused leave is not cumulative and is not convertible to cash. Several law blogs list leave conversion as part of kasambahay final pay. The statute says the opposite. Do not pay it out believing you are legally required to, and do not let anyone tell a kasambahay she is owed it.

Damage deductions have four conditions. Under the implementing rules you may deduct for loss or damage only if she is clearly shown to be responsible, she was given a real chance to explain why the deduction should not be made, the amount does not exceed the actual loss, and the total does not exceed 20% of her wages in a month. You also need her written consent for any deduction the law does not mandate.

Deposits are illegal, always. Section 14 makes it unlawful to require a kasambahay to put up a deposit against loss or damage to household tools, furniture, or equipment. If an agency told you to hold one month as a bond, the agency is wrong and you are the one exposed.

The exit paperwork, and the one deadline the law sets

• [ ] Issue the certificate of employment. Section 35 gives you five days from her request. Form BK-3 in the implementing rules is a four-line template naming the nature of the work, the dates, and a work description.
• [ ] Pay the pro-rated 13th month on separation, not in December.
• [ ] File the final month of SSS, PhilHealth, and Pag-IBIG contributions. Her next employer inherits a broken record if you skip it.
• [ ] Give back every original document. Passport, PSA birth certificate, NBI clearance, TESDA certificate, diplomas. Holding documents to force someone to stay is not leverage, it is a Section 33 cause and a step toward a trafficking complaint.
• [ ] Hand over a signed payslip for the final period, the same Form BK-2 you should have been giving her monthly. Our payslip template guide has the format.
• [ ] Settle the ride home in writing. The implementing rules only cover moving her from her province to your house at the start. Nothing in the law obliges you to pay her fare back to Samar or Bohol. Decent employers do it anyway, and the contract is where you promise it.
• [ ] Update the barangay Registry of Kasambahay so the record closes cleanly.

The certificate of employment is the piece families most often refuse, usually to punish a bad parting. Do not. It costs you nothing, it is a five-day legal duty, and withholding it is the complaint that drags a routine exit in front of a DOLE officer.

When it turns into a dispute

Start local. A barangay conversation settles most household disagreements about a last salary. The DOLE model contract inside the implementing rules says so itself, sending a dispute to the barangay first and up to DOLE only if that fails.

If that fails, the route is the DOLE Field, Provincial, or Regional Office covering your address. Every labor dispute there goes through the Single Entry Approach, a 30-day mandatory conciliation and mediation run by the National Conciliation and Mediation Board. It is free, it is not a trial, and kasambahay are named as their own category of requesting party. Either side can file the Request for Assistance. If nobody settles, the DOLE Regional Director issues a compliance order.

Criminal matters go to the regular courts, not to DOLE. Abuse of a kasambahay reaches into the Revised Penal Code, RA 9262, and RA 7610 where a working child is involved. A city or municipal social welfare officer can rescue an abused or exploited kasambahay immediately, working with the barangay.

One thing that survives the employment. The implementing rules treat everything she learned about your household as privileged and confidential, during and after the job. That protection does not run in reverse. Posting her name and photo in a Facebook hiring group with an accusation you never proved is a defamation risk you are taking on yourself.

Frequently Asked Questions

Is there separation pay for a kasambahay in the Philippines?

Not in the Labor Code sense. RA 10361 gives no separation pay for redundancy or closure. What it gives is an indemnity equal to 15 days of work when the employer ends the contract without one of the just causes in Section 34, on top of wages already earned and pro-rated 13th month pay.

How much is the 15 days indemnity for a kasambahay?

Fifteen days of work is half of a monthly wage, so a kasambahay on the ₱7,800 NCR rate is owed ₱3,900. The statute never sets a daily divisor, so the arithmetic can be argued. DOLE conciliation settles it if the two sides cannot.

Can I dismiss a kasambahay without notice?

Only for one of the seven just causes in Section 34, such as theft, gross neglect, or serious misconduct. Without a just cause you owe the 15 days indemnity. Pregnancy and marriage are never valid grounds under the implementing rules.

What goes into a kasambahay final pay?

Unpaid wages up to the last day worked, pro-rated 13th month pay for the calendar year, and the 15 days indemnity if the dismissal had no just cause. Unused service incentive leave is not converted to cash. Board and lodging can never be deducted.

Do I have to give a kasambahay a certificate of employment?

Yes. Section 35 of RA 10361 gives you five days from the request to issue one, using Form BK-3 in the implementing rules. It names the nature of the work, how long she worked, and a work description. Refusing it is the fastest way to end up at a DOLE hearing.

The exit is decided on the day you hire

Almost every expensive kasambahay separation traces back to a contract that was never written. No term, so nobody knows whether the five-day notice applies. No deployment expense clause, so the fare from Iloilo becomes an argument. No agreement on the ride home, no daily divisor, no severance promise, nothing.

Fix that once and the exit is arithmetic instead of a fight. Use our kasambahay contract template for your next hire and fill in the termination clause properly. Set the salary against a real regional figure with the salary guide, and if you are starting a search now, browse helpers on helpers.ph or see how we verify identity and references before anyone moves in.

Ready to hire the right way from day one? Create a family account and post the role with the terms already written down.