Bringing your Family to Germany: Step by Step

We are aware of the fact that moving to a new country can be very challenging, especially if you find yourself alone through all the changes that you have to face. Therefore, bringing your family to Germany with you can make the whole experience so much easier. This is why we would like to offer you all the information that you need to know in order to reunite your family in Germany – keep reading!

EU/EEA/Switzerland citizens

If you and your relatives are citizens from the European Union, European Economic Area or Switzerland, there are no kind of restrictions for them to enter Germany. They do not need a visa nor a residence permit to move to the country and they can stay there for as long as they want to.

Rest of citizens

For the rest of nationals, there are some requirements to meet in order to bring your family to the country. First of all, you must be in possession of a valid residence permit. There are four kinds of residence permits that allow expats to bring their family members to Germany: the EU Blue Card, the long-term residence permit, the settlement permit and the residence permit for highly-qualified individuals. If you want to find out more information about what kind of visa you and your relatives will need, you should check the website of the German Federal Foreign Office.

Official requirements

Once you make sure that you have a valid residence permit that allows you to bring your family to Germany, you must be able to prove the German government that you are financially stable. This means that you can support yourself and your family members with regards to funds, accommodation and health insurance. The German government claims that every family needs to have “sufficient living space” and all the household facilities must be included in the property.

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If you wish to bring your wife or husband to Germany, you must be able to prove that they are officially your partner. Therefore, you will need to provide a marriage certificate or a civil partnership record.

With regards to family reunification, you must prove that you have the custody of your children. However, if both parents share custody of the child and one of them is not moving to Germany, the other parent must provide their consent before the child can move to the country. A good Relocation Agency can help you with this.

Identity

The last step is related to the verification of the identity and nationality of your family members. For this purpose, they must be in possession of a valid passport. Since the German government needs evidence that this person will enter Germany legally and not pose any kind of threat to the country, their criminal record might be required in some cases.

There are many benefits to sharing a family life in Germany due to its safety, its high-quality school system and many others advantages. We hope that this guideline helped you understand all the steps that you need to follow if you want to bring your family to Germany!

Join the Community!

The most important to a make new country home, is building friendships and networking. We highly recommend you to join our Facebook Group “Project Expat Community” to connect with other Expats in your city and to stay tuned about Project Expat Events and new Partners.