Current Time structure has no method like IsNull() (Valid() or something else) so you need to use t.Equal(time.Time{}) or pointers to check is time defined or not (for example, when you aquire values from external sources and some of them may be omited). Usage of pointers for such small object has known overhead, so I propose to add function IsNull() which returns true for uninitialized time structure (1970-01-01 00:00:00).