Parental benefits/ parental allowances/ state education benefits

Parental leave offers you an opportunity to provide care for your child without withdrawing completely from occupational life.

As an employed person you are entitled to parental leave until your child’s third birthday. You needn’t work during this period – you retain your job and cannot be dismissed by your employer. Mothers and fathers can take parental leave individually or together. To qualify, you must live with the child in a single household, raise and care for the child yourself, for the most part, and work no more than 30 hours per week during the parental leave period.

You are required to file your application for parental leave for the period ending with the child’s third birthday with your employer no later than seven weeks prior to the beginning of your parental leave period. At the end of your parental leave, your employer must offer you an equivalent job.

Parental allowances are a form of government support for parents who wish to care for their child themselves for a certain period following its birth and are thus unable to work full-time (or at all) during that period. Parents who were not gainfully employed prior to the birth of a child are also eligible to receive parental allowances.

Parental allowances are granted in two different forms for births dated 1 July 2015 or later. The first is a basic parental allowance, which corresponds to the previous parental allowance. The second is called ElterngeldPlus. Mothers and fathers who receive ElterngeldPlus are permitted to combine a parental allowance with earnings from part-time work. Parents who return to work part-time before the end of the parental leave period are eligible to receive a parental allowance for a longer period.

You must meet the following prerequisites to receive a parental allowance:

• You have a temporary or permanent residence permit that entitles you to work in Germany.
• You raise and care for your child yourself after its birth.
• You live with your child in a single household.
• You do not work more than 32 hours per week.
• Your registered or habitual residence is in Germany. Citizens of EU Member States, Iceland, Liechtenstein, Norway and Switzerland have the same entitlement to a parental allowance as Germans, provided they live or are gainfully employed in Germany.

The parental allowance equates to roughly two-thirds of a person’s last monthly income (at least 300 and no more than 1,800 euros). The parental allowance is paid for a period of twelve months. Within the first 12 months of the child's life, only one month of basic parental allowance may be taken together. Parents of a multiple birth and parents of early-born children are not affected.

ElterngeldPlus is calculated in the same way as the basic parental allowance, but amounts to no more than half of the parental allowance to which parents without part-time income would be entitled after the birth of a child. That amount is paid for twice as long, however: one month of basic parental leave = two months of ElterngeldPlus.

Parents who opt for a partnership time arrangement receive a partnership bonus: They get two, three or four additional ElterngeldPlus months if they work between 24 and 32 hours per week at the same time during this period. This also applies to separated parents who work part-time together as parents. Single parents are entitled to the full partnership bonus.

The legal situation presented regarding the partnership bonus affects all parents whose children were born after August 2021.

• For births on or after April 1, 2025, the income limit for couples and single parents has been lowered to €175,000. If this limit is exceeded, there is no longer any entitlement to parental allowance.

Further information is provided at www.bmfsfj.de.

The parental allowance office for your area is listed here: Familien-Wegweiser

Parents who live in the Free State of Saxony are eligible to receive a state education benefit during the second or third year of their child’s life.

With this state education benefit, the Free State of Saxony offers special support for parents who have chosen to care for a child at home for a longer period and wish, for example, to make use of the full three years of eligibility for statutory parental leave. However, if you wish to place your child in a state-funded day-care centre or receive government day-care support, you will ordinarily not be eligible to receive a state education benefit.

Further information about the state education benefit (eligibility, length of entitlement, amounts, etc.) is provided at: www.familie.sachsen.de .