Your Pension from Germany

The German mandatory Pension Insurance was until recently divided into the Federal Insurance Administration for Employees (Bundesversicherungsanstalt für Angestellte), more than 16 state-level administrations and additional insurance carriers tailored to special professions such as miners, merchant mariners, railroad employees etc,).

All these individual carriers and administrations have been (with few exceptions) combined into one single administration called “Deutsche Rentenversicherung – Bund” with regional offices in each state (Bundesland).

Thus, Germany has since 2005 a standardized insurance carrier.

With this streamlining it has now become easier to investigate and satisfy valid claims.

The German Pension Insurance

Do a quick check to find out whether you are entitled to draw a pension from the German Social Security Administration!

Invest half an hour of your time - we will do the rest!

Here is how:
Click here or call us at +1-505-328-7777 and ask for our questionnaire. Fill out the questionnaire and send it back to us via e-mail or the Postal Service.

We will analyse your data and quickly give you a Feedback.

There are no obligations to you and you alone decide how to proceed. If your data shows that upon retirement you are owed any money from the German government we offer to you our expert services to get you your money! This is solely your decision!

For the questionnaire and its quick analysis we will charge a one-time fee of $ 25.00

Social Security Benefits

The German Social Security Insurance offers the following: 

(a) a pension at age 65 the latest,

(b) disability benefits in case you are not able to work prior to turning 65,

(c) survivor benefits in case of the death of a spouse,

(d) benefits if you are raised as an orphan up to age 27,

(e) benefits for a divorced spouse raising one or more children.

Insured people who have contributed into the system for quite a long time can apply for a pension at an earlier age.

At present the age when women can receive social security payments is being step-by-step raised to 65. For workers new to the system the age will be raised to 67.

In case an insured worker becomes so ill that it is apparent that he or she will not be able to go back to work for quite some time, that worker can apply for disability benefits.

Those benefits will be granted on a limited basis and the amount of the benefits will depend on the number and amount of paid contributions as well as on the degree of the disability.

In case of the death of a spouse the surviving spouse (depending on the age) can apply for survivor benefits. Those benefits will, however, be partially charged against the survivor's own income – be it in the form of a pension or any income through work.

In case one or both parents of a child die before the child turns 18, the surviving child can receive semi- or full orphan benefits.

If the surviving child is still in job-training or any other job-related schooling the age limit will go up to 27.In case a divorced spouse dies, the surviving divorced spouse can under certain conditions apply for special benefits to help pay for a child's education.

Conditions for receiving a pension

In order to receive Social Security benefits you have to meet the following qualifications:

  • You will receive a pension at age 65 provided you have observed the mandatory waiting period of a minimum of 60 months.

    Women who were born before 1952 can already receive their benefits at age 60 provided they have after turning 40 accumulated a minimum of 120 months of contributions and have observed a waiting period of at least 15 years.

    Insured persons who were born before January 2nd 1961 are entitled to a disability pension if they, during the 5 years prior to becoming disabled, have at least a period of 18 months of contributions and if they have observed the mandatory waiting period of 60 months (see above).

    Insured persons who were born after January 1st 1961 can (by observing the same conditions as above) receive a pension due to partial or full disability.

    In order to receive survivor benefits the deceased spouse must have observed a waiting period of at least 5 years or was already drawing a pension.

    In order to receive semi- or full orphan benefits or for the guardian to receive benefits for raising a child a mandatory waiting period of at least 5 years must have been observed.

Types of Insurances

As an employee your pension insurance is mandatory. Your employer deducts every month from your paycheck the contributions for Social Security and forwards that amount of money to the insurance carrier. The insurance carrier registers the month for which the money has been paid and the amount of your salary by which the amount of your contributions are determined. The same applies for workers who are in an apprenticeship or any other form of professional training.

Under certain conditions students may also be required to pay their contributions into the system. This happens when the student during his or her stay at a college or university holds a job on the side and the resulting salary exceeds a certain annual amount.

Members of the military and other civil services enjoy an automatic pension insurance without having to contribute out of their own pockets. The duration of their services is equal to any required waiting period.

For unemployed workers who are drawing unemployment benefits, the Department of Labor will pay the contributions on their behalf.

Males and females who have raised their own children will receive credits on their accounts with the insurance carrier in the form of monthly contributions.

All paid and credited monthly contributions on your insurance carrier's account will be added up and will determine the time-period you have been insured. Together with the amount of your contributions it will determine the amount of your pension pay-outs.

Therefore it is of absolute importance that ALL monthly contributions are registered by the insurance carrier and credited to your account.

We will help you with making sure that your account is properly credited by providing proof to the insurance carrier in cases of missing data.

Insurance Categories

It is the rule that all employees need to contribute to a mandatory pension insurance. The employer withholds the amount of the contribution from the employee's monthly paycheck and forwards the money to the insurance carrier.

For certain professions it is possible to apply for a mandatory insurance. There is also the possibility to insure oneself on a voluntary basis. If you were in the past insured under any of these three categories, please consult us.

Increase the yield of your pension by letting us examine your situation to find out whether a voluntary or even augmented insurance is advisable.

Procedures Of The European Pension Insurers

All pension insurance carriers record the times, your annual contributions, the amounts of your salaries and all other for your pension relevant information and data in your insurance account. This account reflects your professional career as far as it is relevant for the calculation of your pension. Any missing data or false recordings or mistakes will have a negative impact on the amount of your eventual pension pay outs.

Please let us establish for you what information has been credited to your pension account and make sure that all the data are correct.

We will point out to you how you can check the correctness and completeness of these recordings and assist you if needed in the necessary corrections and/or supplementations of your data.

Your pension account is as important as your bank account! Make sure you are in control of it!

  • Only after an application has been submitted to the Social Security Administration will a pension be approved. The application consists of several pages of a pre-printed form, which the applicant has to fill out. In order to process the application the German Social Security Administration requires a time-period of approximately four to six months, provided all documentation is available, there are no question-marks, no back-checks and there are no requests for you to provide additional proofs.

    Taking this into consideration we suggest that you at the latest at the age of 60 or at least 5 years before your planned retirement have us check the status of your insurance account to make sure all information has been recorded and that those records are correct so that you will receive the maximum possible pay-outs. For example, had any of your previous German employers submitted incorrect or incomplete contributions you would find out about this only after the Social Security Administration had approved your pension. It would then require a rather extensive, expensive and time-consuming effort on your part to have the necessary corrections made to your pension account, during which time you will receive no pension or at the very best only a token amount.

    Therefore we urge you, regardless of your present age, to already now gather and secure all job-related details of any professional activities you had in Germany and clear these information with the German Social Security Administration. You should do so even if you have plans to again work in Germany at any time in the future. Out of experience we can tell you that it is very difficult to correct mistakes after 10 or 20 years that were made by a German employer or a German public office. To correct such mistakes after such a long period of time you would need extensive proofs; and the more time has passed the more difficult it will be to obtain those proofs.

    Make good use of the time until you plan to retire. Please appoint us now so we can assist you with clearing all the details.

  • All pension insurance carriers record the times, your annual contributions, the amounts of your salaries and all other for your pension relevant information and data in your insurance account. This account reflects your professional career as far as it is relevant for the calculation of your pension. Any missing data or false recordings or mistakes will have a negative impact on the amount of your eventual pension pay outs.

    Please let us establish for you what information has been credited to your pension account and make sure that all the data are correct.

    We will point out to you how you can check the correctness and completeness of these recordings and assist you if needed in the necessary corrections and/or supplementations of your data.

    Your pension account is as important as your bank account! Make sure you are in control of it!

  • You can at any time, even after many years, request corrections to your pension account. If there are missing or incorrect data on your account you are by-and-large not held responsible for these mistakes. However, you are responsible for proving that the information is indeed incorrect. Acceptable proofs would be job-related documentation, certificates, salary statements and even the testimony of a witness.

    We can offer you our specialized service in assisting you with the correction(s) of incorrect or missing data on your pension account. We conduct our research at the source through our German partner, who will, if necessary, interrogate witnesses, check with public offices (records) and even find individuals who could shed light on your problems.

    Because this may expand into an extensive effort we will advise you on whether it will be worth our time and your expense if the outcome will result in only a marginal increase in your pension pay-outs.

  • Should our research show that there are missing time-periods and/or contributions on your pension account or that for example one or more of your salaried jobs have not been recorded, that will, of course, have a negative impact on the amount of your eventual pension pay-outs.

    We will assist you in the research and in adding the missing time-periods and contributions to your pension account. In case of any missing documentation we will go to the source and assist you in your investigations. We will consult witnesses and check with official departments and offices and even try to find certain person(s) if he/she could shed some light on your problem.

    Should it become apparent that our research will be rather extensive and time-consuming we will be able to offer you an estimation of whether the efforts and moneys required for finding the requested documentation will be worth the increase in your pension-pay-outs.

Insurance Periods

Please appoint us to look into these matters for you so that you will receive full and proper credits for your mandatory and/or voluntary insurance periods.

The two latter periods (child-raising and substitutions) are periods, which you will get credit for only upon application since there are no data registered with the insurance carrier to that regard. Therefore it is important that you secure these periods with your insurance carrier; they are as good as cash!

  • As an employee your pension insurance is mandatory. Your employer deducts every month from your salary the Social Security contributions and forwards those amounts of money to the insurance carrier. The insurance carrier registers every month for which the mandatory insurance has been paid as insurance-months.

  • In case there is no mandatory insurance you can make your contributions on a voluntary basis. You pay your monthly contributions, thus creating the necessary insurance period. The amount of your pension depends on the number of months you paid contributions (insurance-period) and the amount of your contributions.

  • In case you have raised your own biological children or have adopted one or more children or you are a foster parent the female guardian (or mother) will normally receive a certain insurance-period credit. If both parents apply, this credit will also be given to the male guardian.

  • There are certain provisions under which you will be given credit for contributions even if you have not paid your monthly dues. This will happen if you have been a POW, have been persecuted by the NS, are a political fugitive or have been a political prisoner in the DDR etc.

German Pensions in the US

In General

As the recipient of social security payments from a German insurance carrier you can have your payments transferred into a bank account abroad. The amount of the pay-outs depends, however, on the status of the recipient's citizenship and on the country of residence and on the currency exchange rate, which may vary from month to month.

You can apply for your pension with the German Social Security Administration from any country outside of Germany. All you have to do is request the proper application forms from the Administration in German (!) and make sure that all supporting documentation is stated in the German language.

We are specialized in assisting pensioners who are living abroad and will handle all business with the German insurance carriers in a professional way.

We are offering our 'wrap-around' service, which goes beyond the basic correspondence such as the assistance with your application for pension, the checking upon the correctness of your account, the gathering of all proofs and documentation and the investigation of missing records and more.

Social Security And Divorce

In General

Question: Besides having your social security contributions deducted from your paycheck in Germany, did you ever pay contributions in any other country?

In general you can, provided you have met all conditions in the respective countries, receive social security payments simultaneously from any country you have worked in and made your contributions.

The resulting income tax that is generated by those payments to you will have to be paid by you in the country of your residence or the country where the payments are being transferred to.

We will be honored if you trust us with the safeguarding of your interests in front of the respective national Social Security Administrations. We work together with experts who are fluent in the languages of the respective countries and will be able to get you in touch with legal advisors or attorneys who will represent you in the court of law if necessary.

  • The respective Social Security Administrations of Germany and the USA have signed an agreement, which guarantees pension payouts to citizens residing in each partner-country, also called 'Sozialversicherungsabkommen'.

    In general the agreement stipulates that the partner-countries view each others' citizen as their own in regard to social security matters. The agreement also states that under certain circumstances credit will be given to the insured for time periods even when no contributions have been paid during those times.

    Make sure you secure these benefits as they are offered in this agreement. You can that way increase the yields of your contributions.

    We are specialized in assisting anybody who is residing in the USA and who will at some time expect pension pay-outs from the German Social Security Administration

  • In general, if you fulfill all requirements, you are allowed to receive your pension from Germany simultaneously with any Social Security payouts from the USA, or any other country for that matter.

    All you have to do is ask us to assist you with setting up your application and to guide you through the laborious and complex process until success is guaranteed.

    You need to apply for your US pension with the US Social Security Administration. Upon request our American partner can assist you there as well.

  • Germany, all members of the EU, Iceland, Lichtenstein, Norway and Switzerland have among themselves signed social security agreements. These agreements provide certain equal rights to the citizens of those countries regarding the status of their pension insurances regardless in which countries the citizens reside and what their nationalities are.

    In addition Germany has signed separate social security agreements with the following countries providing the citizens of those countries with certain benefits:

    Australia, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Chile, Israel, Japan, Canada, Croatia, Morocco, Macedonia, South Korea, Romania, Serbia & Montenegro, Tunisia, Turkey and the USA.

    We will assist you in every way through our foreign offices. This goes for the citizens of the EU, EFTA, Switzerland, and all other aforementioned countries but also for anybody regardless of nationality who has ever worked in Germany.

  • In general you can, provided you meet all requirements, receive pensions simultaneously from Germany, any member country of the EU, EFTA, from Switzerland or any country, with which Germany has signed a Social Security Agreement. There are, however, differences to observe, which may affect the amount of your pension.

    By using our offices you can be assured that we will assist you from the time we file your application to the moment you receive information regarding the amount of your pension. We will help you in obtaining all benefits due to you to maximize the amount of your payouts.

    There is extensive preparatory work necessary on your part; we will work with you to make it easy by assisting you in every step of the way.