Thomas dies at 51, still on the payroll. The German entity has direct insurance (“Direktversicherung”) with survivor cover attached, and the partner Thomas has shared a home with for nine years is not named anywhere. The benefit exists and cannot be claimed.
We recommend reviewing German survivor benefits once a year for whether the eligible people are named in writing, because the payout depends on that entry rather than on the size of the promise. Here’s what you need to file before a claim.
The list of people who can receive a German survivor benefit is shorter than most teams assume
A German company pension can normally only pay a survivor benefit to a short list of people: the spouse, an ex-spouse, the children, and an unmarried partner who shared the household.
Parents, siblings, grandchildren and godchildren are not on that list. Write them into the plan wording and the tax treatment of the whole arrangement comes into question. (The list is set out in a BMF circular of 12 August 2021; children are defined by reference to § 32 EStG, so the usual child-allowance age limits apply.)
If you run benefits across several countries, this is the point where the German plan diverges from what you are used to. Free choice of beneficiary is normal on group life cover elsewhere and does not exist here. We recommend reading your own plan wording line by line against the list, and checking above all whether an unmarried-partner clause appears at all. Older standard wordings name spouses and children only. While the employee is alive, that is a wording change, while afterwards, it is a rejection letter.
The declaration for an unmarried partner can only be made while the employee is alive
Covering an unmarried partner under a German company pension means naming that person and putting the shared household in writing.
Only the employee can make that declaration, and it has to be in place by the start of the payout phase at the latest. Where it is missing, the family finds out from the rejection letter, usually weeks after the funeral.
We recommend asking for it at two fixed points: when someone joins the plan, and whenever an address change into a shared household comes through. One extra field on the onboarding form costs nothing and closes the gap that opens most often in unmarried partnerships.
A one-off Sterbegeld to other people does not put the plan at risk
A one-off Sterbegeld, a payment towards the funeral, can go to someone outside that short list without the plan losing its recognition as a German occupational pension.
Up to 8,000 euros counts as appropriate, or 7,669 euros where the promise runs through a Unterstützungskasse or Pensionskasse. Whoever receives it pays tax on it. (The figure comes from the ceiling for ordinary funeral costs under § 150 VVG, set by BaFin at 8,000 euros; the lower limit follows from § 2 Abs. 1 KStDV.)
This is the most useful exception in the whole topic, because the funeral director’s invoice lands first with whoever signs the order. For a single employee that is often a sister or a father, someone with no entitlement at all under the pension. Germany’s statutory funeral payment through the health insurers ended on 1 January 2004. We recommend a Sterbegeld clause wherever a meaningful share of the German workforce is single.
A commuting accident brings a completely different list
Where someone dies in a workplace accident, a commuting accident or from a recognised occupational disease, the statutory accident insurance pays its own Sterbegeld, and the group entitled to it is far wider.
Siblings, grandchildren, stepchildren, foster children and parents are all named. It goes to whoever paid for the funeral. For 2026 the amount is 6,780 euros (§ 64 SGB VII, one seventh of the Bezugsgröße).
So a single death can involve three different ideas of who the family is: the narrow one in the pension, the wide one in the accident insurance, and the succession law position. We recommend writing the report to the Berufsgenossenschaft into your German death-in-service procedure as its own step, even where the commute looks unrelated to the cause. That report comes from the company. The family will never raise it.
Families claim what they can find
A survivor benefit gets paid where the family knows it exists and can say who is holding it.
The contract sits with the provider and the promise sits in the personnel file. Neither is on the kitchen table where the family is working through folders the week after the funeral.
We recommend one sheet of paper per employee per year: the implementation route, the provider’s name, the policy number, one phone number inside the company, and the request to file it with the other important papers. It is the only document in the whole process the family can read without access to the personnel file or the contract.
This is what Meolea is for. Employees record who should be reached, where the originals are kept and which contracts exist, and the people they have appointed can find that again when it matters.
A life event is the right moment for a beneficiary review
Marriage, divorce, a birth, and moving in together all change who receives a German survivor benefit.
An ex-spouse stays inside the eligible group. A designation made in 2011 can therefore outlast a divorce and pay out exactly as written.
An annual all-staff email meets those events by coincidence. We recommend attaching the question to the notifications payroll already receives: tax class changes, child allowance, a new address. The trigger has been spotted there already, and one sentence with a link does the job.
What we can go through with you
The plan wording is yours to fix. The other half sits with the employee and no HR process reaches it: what the family knows, where the papers are, who they call first.
That is what Meolea is for, and companies provide it as an employee benefit.
💡 Related reading: Employee bereavement in Germany: what employers decide in the first days · Tax-free hardship payments alongside the Sachbezug allowance
Frequently asked questions
Who actually receives a German occupational survivor benefit?
The spouse, an ex-spouse, the children, and an unmarried partner who shared the household. Parents, siblings and grandchildren are outside that group. Going beyond it in the plan wording puts the tax treatment of the whole arrangement at risk.
Can we cover an employee’s unmarried partner?
Yes. It needs the partner named and a written declaration of the shared household, in place by the start of the payout phase at the latest. Only the employee can make it, which is why it has to be collected while they are alive.
How large can a Sterbegeld from the plan be?
Up to 8,000 euros counts as appropriate, or 7,669 euros through a Unterstützungskasse or Pensionskasse. Whoever receives the money pays tax on it. It can go to someone who would otherwise not be eligible at all.
Does a divorced spouse lose the entitlement automatically?
No. An ex-spouse stays inside the eligible group, so an old designation can outlast a divorce. It changes only where someone actively changes it.
Does the survivor benefit count against the 50-euro Sachbezug allowance?
No, these are two separate instruments with separate legal bases. How the Sachbezug allowance and the tax-free hardship payment under R 3.11 Abs. 2 LStR are budgeted alongside each other is covered in its own article.
Does the accident insurer pay on top?
Where death results from a workplace accident, a commuting accident or a recognised occupational disease, there is a separate entitlement independent of the company promise. The group entitled to it is wider and includes siblings and grandchildren. The report to the Berufsgenossenschaft comes from the employer.