Family Allowance (Familienzuschlag)

Married civil servants working in the German public sector are entitled to family allowance. The amount of family allowance that a married civil servant household collects is based on two factors:

• Employment status of spouse

  If the spouse is also a civil servant, then each of them can claim half of the full family allowance amount when one of these conditions is met:

  1. Both individuals work full time

  2. One works full time and the other works part time

  3. Both individuals work part time, one works under 50% of the regular FTE and the other works over 50% of the regular FTE, with a total FTE of at least 1.

     If the combined FTE is less than 1, each individual can claim a portion of the half family allowance amount based on the FTE. Suppose that the full family allowance amount is 1000 euros, and the FTEs of both civil servants in the household are 0.75 and 0.2 respectively. The total amount they collect is:

     500 x 0.75 + 500 x 0.2 = 475 euros

     If the spouse is not a civil servant, the employee (civil servant) has claim to the full amount of the family allowance based on his or her FTE.

• Child specific family allowance

  It is also known as the child related part of family allowance. Besides marriage-based family allowance, the German Government also provides child-based family allowance to civil servants with children. If a civil servant is entitled to child allowance (EStG and BKGG), he or she is also automatically eligible for collecting the child related part of family allowance.

  For civil servants in grades A1 through A5, they are entitled to a larger child related family allowance amount. The same numbering of children used for child allowance also applies to the child related family allowance. The FTE percentage of civil servant is not taken into consideration for this type of family allowance.