Exactly two years after the previous German government agreed to a draft bill to prevent fraudulent claims of parentage to secure residency rights and receive social welfare, Germany's Parliament, last Friday (June 12) enacted a law that tightens the rules surrounding what are referred to as fictitious fatherhoods.

With the new bill, which has now become law, the government is trying to prevent a specific scam it calls 'fraudulent paternity acknowledgments': individual men with German citizenship -- usually in exchange for payment -- acknowledging paternity for the children of foreign women, even though there is neither a biological father-child relationship nor a romantic partnership. This can secure residency rights and possibly also access to social benefits.

According to the migration media service (MDI), a right of residence for both a child and the child’s mother can be created when a German man acknowledges paternity of a foreign child. Once paternity is acknowledged, the child is considered the child of a German national and is also issued a German passport. The mother, in turn, is granted a right of residence as the child’s mother.

In the draft bill, the federal government estimates that there will be approximately 65,000 cases per year that will be affected by the new law.

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According to German law, a man can prove biological paternity with a DNA test, while social paternity is evident, for example, in how the father interacts with the child, takes on responsibility or makes child support payments.

Here's what changes for migrants and refugees in Germany now the law has been enacted:

• Foreigners' offices now have to sign off on the recognition of paternity when the person acknowledging paternity is a German citizen or has a long-term right of residence, but the child's mother does not, e.g. only a tolerated stay (Duldung).
• The foreigners' office will henceforward retain the right to revoke its approval in case it was obtained through bribery, threats or the intentional provision of false information. Providing false or incomplete information can moreover lead to criminal charges.
• The detection of anyone found to be abusing fatherhood is to be made easier via so-called statutory assumptions to streamline legal proceedings and shift the burden of producing evidence. In addition, the people trying to get a fatherhood recognized need to fulfil stricter obligations to cooperate by submitting explanations and evidence relevant to the decision-making.
• Approval from the foreigners' office is not required if the person acknowledging paternity "is in fact the child's biological father, abuse can be ruled out, and the civil registry office can verify this through simple means."

Extreme cases

In the past, extreme cases of fictitious paternities where fraudsters turned sham fatherhoods into a lucrative business made headlines. News outlet Tagesspiegel, for instance, described the case of an officially destitute man who claimed fatherhood of 24 children, none of whom were his biological ones. The social welfare he reportedly received amounted to 22,500 euros per month.

In last Friday's reading of the law in the Bundestag, lawmaker Cornell-Anette Babendererde from the ruling conservative CDU party cited a case from Lower Saxony in which a single man with German citizenship had acknowledged paternity for 47 children.

Still, the draft law was reportedly the subject of some heated debate in the Committee on Internal Affairs, Tagesspiegel reported, citing participants. One reason is that the scope of the problem is unknown: reliable figures on the number of frauds and the resulting financial damage for German taxpayers are rare.

During the four-year period from January 1, 2018, to December 31, 2021, authorities in Germany processed 1,769 possible cases of abuse and identified 290, an average of 73 cases per year. That's according to an answer by Germany's federal justice and interior ministries to an inquiry by the migration media service (MDI) from the beginning of the year.

During the same period, according to the ministries, German diplomatic missions abroad also recorded a "very low rate of identified cases of abuse."

Criticism from opposition parties, advocacy groups

During the aforementioned Bundestag reading, Green Party MP Filiz Polat argued that the low number of cases was disproportionate to the high bureaucratic effort now needed to review 65,000 proceedings annually. Polat also expressed concerns about binational families, saying they were being placed under general suspicion.

Advocacy groups for migrants and binational families criticized the law too, arguing it unfairly targets vulnerable people. They contend that investigations are now triggered by residency status differences rather than evidence of actual fraud. 

In a Facebook post, the Association of Binational Families warned of consequences for international couples living in different countries at the time of pregnancy.

"When proceedings are delayed, children are left without a parent with legally recognized parental status -- with tangible consequences: uncertain residency status, lack of benefits, and, in the worst case, even statelessness," the post reads. "Another problem is that families living across borders must expect even longer separations because family reunification is also delayed."

The far-right AfD reportedly introduced its own bill with even stricter rules, but it failed to secure a majority.

The first introduction of the draft bill -- on June 12, 2024 -- was the third time lawmakers tried to prevent fictitious paternities. The first reform from 2008 was denied by Germany's constitutional court due to the possibility that children could become stateless as a result. The second reform attempt failed as it wasn't forceful enough, according to news agency epd.

The new law has been enacted, and took effect the day following the vote.

with dpa, migration media service