Germany’s Parliament, after years of discussions and a draft bill two years ago, has enacted the law tightening the rules around sham paternities, where individual men with German citizenship acknowledge paternity for the children of foreign women, usually in exchange for payment, despite not having a biological connection to the child or a romantic one for the mother.
This ensures residency rights for the mother, who has custody, and a German passport for the child, whose connection to the German father is legally recognized, according to Der Mediendienst Integration (MDI), a central information research service covering migration.
A Long-Running Issue
The so-called “fake” or “sham fathers” scam has been an issue for the German immigration system for over a decade. The first draft law aimed at countering this issue was created in 2008, but Germany’s constitutional court rejected it because it could potentially make children stateless.
In 2017, several media outlets reported on the “epidemic” of false paternity claims, with some estimating as many as 5,000 instances a year. This was the number the government was aware of, meaning the actual number was expected to be higher.
Deutsche Welle reported in 2017 on broadcaster RBB’s estimate of 700 false paternity claims in Berlin alone, with Martin Steltner, a spokesperson for the Berlin state prosecutors’ office at the time, saying they had found a man who had claimed paternity for ten different children.
At the time, many worried about how to regulate the phenomenon without endangering the children and about whether the state could probe into personal lives by ordering DNA tests to prove paternity.
In 2024, the justice and interior ministers told reporters that authorities processed 1,769 possible cases of fraud between January 2018 and December 2021, with around 290 considered actual cases. AFP reported a further 1,800 examinations at German diplomatic missions abroad.
The State Pays Schemers
Since the 2010s, several striking cases have been uncovered. Paternity acknowledgement had become a very lucrative business model, with most fathers officially not having any money, thus receiving social benefits from the state and frequently a downpayment from the mothers.
According to Tagesspiegel, Johnathan A. was one of these men: officially penniless, he claimed paternity for 24 children, and with no official means of financial support, the state paid him child support for each child, up to €22,500 per month overall.
Bundestag lawmaker Cornell-Anette Babendererde from the ruling conservative CDU party also highlighted an incident during the law’s reading on 12 June: a man from Lower Saxony acknowledged 47 children.
These remain outlier cases, but the scope of the issue remains largely unknown since official reports are scarce.
What the Bill Entails
The bill introduces several new authentication processes to avoid fraudulent claims, which affect thousands of binational families, with the draft bill suggesting that about 65,000 cases per year will be affected.
Foreigners’ offices (Ausländerbehörden) will now be required to sign off on the recognition of paternity whenever a citizen or long-term resident acknowledges paternity to a child whose mother has no residency or tolerated stay (Duldung). If the parent is the biological father, abuse is ruled out, and the civil registry verifies the claim, the foreigner’s office approval is not required.
The office will also gain the right to revoke approval in cases of bribery, threats, and intentional withholding of information. Providing false or incomplete information can lead to criminal charges. Statutory assumptions will streamline the legal proceedings by changing the rules around producing evidence.
Tagesspiegel reported that there are ways to prove the situation is clearly “not abusive,” including if the father and mother are married after the birth, have lived under the same roof for at least 18 months, or if the child has siblings.
There is also the possibility of undergoing a DNA test to prove paternity without a doubt. Under German law, social paternity also becomes evident in how the child interacts with the father and whether the father takes on parenting responsibilities or pays child support before application.
Controversy: AfD’s Alternative
The law did not pass without controversy: both human rights advocacy groups and Bundestag parties spoke out against differing aspects of the law.
Green Party MP Filiz Polat highlighted that the relatively low number of sham paternities is disproportionate to the amount of bureaucratic work now required to review 65,000 proceedings annually, while placing general suspicion on binational families by default.
The far-right AfD party’s parliamentary group submitted their own draft bill. This bill would have mandated the presence of immigration authorities in all cases where one parent is non-German and thus requires paternity recognition. In this draft, the burden of proof lies with the parent seeking acknowledgment, and it offers DNA tests as unequivocal proof of paternity. This version failed to secure a majority.
Advocacy Groups: Enacted Law Exposes Children
Advocacy groups have highlighted that the law targets the most vulnerable families, exposing children, arguing that this is done not to stop fraudulent cases but to address residency status differences. The Association of Binational Families and Partnerships, the only advocacy group for binational, migrant, and transnational families and couples at the federal, state, and local levels, warned in a Facebook post that couples living in different countries during pregnancy are especially vulnerable.
“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,” they wrote. “Another problem is that families living across borders must expect even longer separations because family reunification is also delayed.”
The law has now officially passed and has been enacted, having taken effect the day after the vote.
