Federal Parental Allowance and Parental Leave Act: What's new from 01.09.2021

Parents whose children are born on or after Sept. 1, 2021, can expect good news.

The changes to the Parental Allowance and Parental Leave Act will result in more part-time options and a more flexible partnership bonus will be possible. Parents of premature babies will receive additional parental allowance months. There is less bureaucracy for parents with low self-employed supplementary income.

In concrete terms, this means for parents:
Parents who work while taking parental leave and receiving parental allowance can from now on work 32 hours per week, instead of the previous 30 hours per week. The partnership bonus for the parallel part-time work of both parents can be drawn in the future with 24 - 32 hours per week instead of the previous 25 - 30 hours per week. This change also means that the partnership bonus can no longer be taken flexibly for 4 months at a time, but between 2 and 4 months. This means that it is possible to leave the company flexibly or to extend it for a short period of time.
From now on, there will also be financial advantages for parents who received income replacement benefits, such as sick pay or short-time allowance, before receiving parental allowance. The amount of parental allowance is no longer reduced by these income replacement benefits.
Parents of premature babies born at least 6 weeks before the calculated date receive an additional month of basic parental allowance. It is also possible to convert the additional month of basic parental allowance into ElterngeldPlus. You can find out more about ElterngeldPlus here.
Parents who have a low self-employed additional income will be able to have their income taken into account more effectively in the future. Thus, parents with a very low income (less than 35 euros per month on average) will have the option of saying that their non-self-employed income alone should be taken into account for the calculation.
However, there are also restrictions in setting the income limits. Parents who together earn more than 300,000 euros will no longer receive parental allowance. This limit was previously 500,000 euros. For single parents, the limit remains at 250,000 euros.

For more information, you can find the detailed press release on the BMFSFJ's family portal under this link.  

If you have any questions or suggestions, please feel free to contact our TU Family Service at familien-servicetu-dortmundde or +49 231 755 6912 / 4347.