Germany Law Reforms in Abundance

Summary

INTRODUCTION

In stark contrast to the sparsity of law reforms in the field of family law during the preceding years of the last legislative period, towards its end the legislature made up for this lack of activity by quickly enacting several bills which brought about significant changes. Whereas some of those reforms had been in the making for a while, others came with utter speed and as a total surprise. The latter was in particular the case with by far the most important and widely recognised reform, the opening of marriage to same-sex couples (section 2). A law reform which was equally hotly debated in public concerned the issue of child marriages that, owing to the increase of refugees in Germany, had led to court decisions on the recognition of marriages of minors concluded abroad (section 3). Another reform spurred by the refugee influx concerned the newly introduced procedure to prevent fraudulent acknowledgements of paternity, such as for purposes of obtaining nationality (section 4). Ultimately, with a view to the constitutionally guaranteed right of the child to know its genetic origins, a registry for official sperm donations was created while at the same time finally excluding the previously still existing possibility of establishing paternity of the donor (section 5).

MARRIAGE FOR ALL?

MARRIAGE FOR SAME-SEX COUPLES

After Chancellor Angela Merkel softened her stance on same-sex marriage by allowing a free ‘vote of conscience’ for her party's parliamentary group, a bill legalising same-sex marriage passed the German Parliament (Bundestag) on 30 June 2017 and the Federal Council (Bundesrat) seven days later. As of 1 October 2017, marriage has been available both to partners of the same and different sex according to the German Civil Code, section 1353 para. (Bürgerliches Gesetzbuch).

Provisions on marriage are now applicable interchangeably to same-sex and different-sex couples. This includes full joint adoption rights, which is one of the major changes brought about by the legalisation of marriage for same-sex partners. Even though benefits granted to registered life partnerships (the German civil partnership for same-sex couples) were gradually extended, this never included joint adoption rights. A non-biological child could only be adopted by one partner alone and initially the other partner was prohibited from even subsequently adopting the child.