Paternity acknowledgement is one of the most intimate acts in family law. In Germany it has also, for years, been quietly exploited as an immigration workaround, with real consequences for children, families and the integrity of the registration system. Parliament has now moved to change that.
On Friday, 12 June 2026, the Bundestag approved the federal government's draft legislation aimed at preventing the fraudulent acknowledgement of paternity by 296 votes to 130, with 134 abstentions. In the decisive third reading, the coalition of CDU/CSU and SPD voted in favour, while Bündnis 90/Die Grünen and Die Linke voted against. The AfD abstained. A separate AfD bill seeking to reform paternity acknowledgement rules along different lines was rejected by all other parliamentary groups.
Under existing German family law, a man may voluntarily acknowledge paternity of a child without biological proof, and this acknowledgement carries far-reaching legal consequences, including conferring residency rights on a non-German mother through family reunification.
The federal government argued that this mechanism had been systematically exploited: German men, or men with permanent residence rights, acknowledge paternity of children born to women with only provisional or tolerated immigration status, with the sole purpose of establishing or strengthening the mother's right to remain in Germany.
Immigration authorities, civil registry offices, and diplomatic missions had all reported that existing rules were insufficient to stop such abuses effectively. Germany's Interior Ministry had estimated approximately 5,000 suspected cases nationwide as far back as 2017.
The core innovation is a mandatory approval requirement. Where an immigration-status gap exists between the parties, for example, where the acknowledging man holds German citizenship and the mother holds only a tolerated stay or permission to remain while an asylum application is being processed, the local immigration authority must formally consent before the paternity registration can take effect.
Without that consent, the civil registry office must reject the application to record the man as the child's father. The approval requirement does not apply where the man is demonstrably the biological father, or where a genuine social and family relationship between the man and the child can be verified by official documents or registry entries. Where no verifiable documents exist, the immigration authority retains the right to investigate whether a genuine parental bond is present before granting consent.
If it later emerges that an immigration authority's consent was obtained by fraud, including wilful deception, threats, bribery, or deliberately false or withheld information, the consent can be revoked within the bounds of constitutional law, with any immigration or citizenship consequences reversed accordingly. The legislation also introduces criminal sanctions for providing false or incomplete information in order to obtain immigration authority approval, and for using such improperly obtained approval in legal proceedings.
The law did not pass without controversy. At a parliamentary hearing in March 2026, expert witnesses were sharply divided. Supporters, including representatives of German municipalities and administrative courts, welcomed the shift of the abuse-check function from notaries and civil registry offices to better-equipped immigration authorities, arguing it would simplify procedures and close a longstanding structural information gap.
Critics, including constitutional lawyers and welfare organisations, raised serious concerns. They argued the law creates a form of special family law for children of mixed-nationality or foreign parents, potentially leaving a child without any legally recognised father for months while authorities process an approval application.
Scholars from the Bucerius Law School and the German Association of Women Lawyers warned that the law improperly relocates the establishment of legal parenthood from family law into an immigration control regime, placing the heaviest burden on the children themselves.
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