Stepchild Adoption in Germany: Requirements & Process

A stepchild adoption takes place when one partner in a couple adopts the other partner’s child. This applies to married couples and registered civil partners. It also applies to unmarried couples who live together in a stable relationship and share a household.

Under Section 1766a of the German Civil Code (Bürgerliches Gesetzbuch, BGB), a relationship generally counts as stable if the couple have lived together as a couple for at least four years, or live together with a child they have in common. It generally does not count as stable if either partner is married to someone else.

A stepchild adoption is also possible where a child was previously adopted by a parent’s former partner, and that parent then marries or enters a relationship with someone new. German law makes no distinction between opposite-sex and same-sex couples. Stepchild adoption is possible for both minor and adult children.

To adopt a stepchild in Germany, the stepparent must be at least 21, both parents and the child must consent, and in most cases the family must attend counseling at an adoption placement agency before applying to the family court. The adoption must also serve the child’s best interests.

These stepparent adoption requirements build on the general requirements for adoption in Germany. Under Section 1741(1), sentence 1 BGB, an adoption is permitted if it serves the best interests of the child and a parent-child relationship can be expected to develop between the adoptive parent and the child.

Where the adoptive parent is not the partner of the child’s parent, German law requires them to be at least 25 years old. A stepparent, by contrast, may adopt their partner’s child from the age of 21 (Section 1743 BGB).

Both of the child’s parents and the child must consent to the adoption. If the child lacks legal capacity, their legal representative gives consent on their behalf. Parents can only give consent once the child is at least eight weeks old (Section 1747(2) BGB). Each consent is declared to the family court and must be notarized. Once it reaches the court, a parent’s consent is binding and cannot be withdrawn (Section 1750 BGB). It lapses if the application is withdrawn or refused, and a parent’s consent also lapses if the adoption is not granted within three years. A parent’s consent is not required if they are permanently unable to make a declaration or their whereabouts are permanently unknown. In limited circumstances, the family court can also replace a parent’s consent.

Section 9a of the Adoption Placement Act (Adoptionsvermittlungsgesetz, AdVermiG) makes counseling at an adoption placement agency mandatory in stepchild adoptions. The child’s parents, the adopting stepparent, and the child must all attend counseling before submitting any declarations or applications. The agency then issues a certificate confirming that the counseling took place, which is submitted to the family court.

There are several exceptions to the counseling requirement:

• A parent who lives abroad and is giving up their legal ties to the child does not have to attend. The same applies if that parent is permanently unable to make a declaration, their whereabouts are permanently unknown, or the court replaces their consent.
• Counseling is not required if the adopting parent was already married to the child’s parent when the child was born.
• However, if the child was born abroad and the other biological parent lives abroad, the adopting parent and their partner must still attend counseling, even if they were married at the time of the birth.

The adoption procedure is broadly the same for all types of adoption. It includes a probationary placement period (Adoptionspflege) under Section 1744 BGB, which precedes the adoption and allows the child to settle into the family. The family court decides how long this period should last. In a stepchild adoption, the probationary period simply consists of the family continuing to live together, and it is usually much shorter, especially if the family has already lived together for several years.

How long the proceedings take depends on the workload of the family court and the length of the probationary period. Costs consist of court fees, notary fees, and legal fees, and depend on the circumstances. At Schlun & Elseven Rechtsanwälte, our family lawyers assess your situation at the outset and give you an estimate of the expected costs.

A stepchild adoption usually follows five steps:

1. Counseling: the child’s parents, the stepparent, and the child attend counseling at an adoption placement agency, unless an exception applies, and receive a certificate.
2. Consents: the child’s parents and the child give their consent. Each consent is notarized and declared to the family court, and cannot be given subject to a condition or time limit. The parents can consent only once the child is at least eight weeks old.
3. Application: the stepparent applies to the family court (Section 1752 BGB). The application must be notarized, cannot be made subject to a condition or time limit, and cannot be filed by a representative on the stepparent’s behalf. Our lawyers prepare the application and coordinate the notarization of the application and the consents.
4. Probationary period: the family continues to live together while the court assesses whether a parent-child relationship has developed.
5. Court decision: the family court decides whether the adoption serves the child’s best interests and, if so, grants the adoption by court order.

In our experience, several problems come up repeatedly before families seek advice:

• Delaying after consent is given: a parent’s consent lapses if the adoption is not granted within three years (Section 1750(4) BGB).
• Assuming counseling is not needed because the couple were married at the birth: if the child was born abroad and the other parent lives abroad, the stepparent and their partner must still attend.
• Overlooking what the adoption ends: the child’s legal ties to the other parent and that side of the family end, including maintenance claims and inheritance rights.
• Leaving the surname decision too late: where the spouses do not share a married name, the child’s surname must be chosen before the adoption is granted.
• Expecting an adult stepchild to gain German citizenship: citizenship through adoption requires the child to have been under 18 when the application was filed.

An adoption remains in place regardless of whether the parents’ relationship continues. A stepparent who has adopted a child remains that child’s legal parent even if the relationship with the other parent ends.

A stepchild adoption also ends the child’s legal ties to the other biological parent and that parent’s relatives. This affects parental custody and contact rights, maintenance claims, and inheritance.

The adoption also affects the child’s surname (Section 1757 BGB). The child takes the adoptive parent’s surname as their birth name, which in a stepchild adoption between spouses is usually the couple’s shared married name. If the spouses do not share a married name, they choose the child’s surname by declaration to the family court before the adoption is granted. A child aged five or older must agree to that choice. On the stepparent’s application and with the child’s consent, the court can also change the child’s first name where this serves the child’s best interests. For serious reasons relating to the child’s welfare, it can also add the child’s previous surname before or after the new one.

An exception to the ending of family ties applies if the other biological parent had parental custody and has died. In that case, the child keeps their legal ties to the deceased parent’s side of the family, such as grandparents, while gaining a new family line through the adoptive parent (Section 1756(2) BGB).

A stepchild adoption carried out in Germany is governed by German law, regardless of the family members’ nationality (Article 22 of the Introductory Act to the Civil Code, EGBGB).

For international blended families, two further questions often arise:

• whether a stepchild adoption already granted abroad will be recognized in Germany, and
• whether an adoption carried out in Germany will take effect in the child’s or a parent’s country of origin.

At Schlun & Elseven Rechtsanwälte, our family lawyers advise on these questions under the rules of private international law and assess whether recognition is possible in each case. Where proceedings abroad are needed, we work with partner firms in other jurisdictions.

Where a German stepparent adopts a child who is not already a German citizen, the child automatically acquires German citizenship once the adoption takes effect under German law, provided they were under 18 when the adoption application was filed (Section 6 of the Nationality Act, Staatsangehörigkeitsgesetz, StAG). Citizenship also passes to the child’s own children. An adult stepchild does not acquire citizenship this way. For an adoption granted abroad, further conditions apply, which our citizenship lawyers can check alongside any residence questions.

For same-sex married couples, stepchild adoption is currently the only way for both partners to become the child’s legal parents. Unlike opposite-sex married couples, they do not benefit from automatic legal parentage. This follows from Sections 1591 and 1592 BGB:

• The legal mother is the woman who gave birth to the child (Section 1591 BGB).
• The legal father is the man who was married to the mother at the time of birth, who has acknowledged paternity, or whose paternity has been established by a court (Section 1592 BGB).

Genetic parentage is not decisive.

When same-sex marriage was introduced in Germany in 2017, the parentage provisions of the BGB were not amended. As a result, the wife of the woman who gives birth is not automatically recognized as the child’s co-mother, and the husband of a man who has acknowledged paternity is not automatically recognized as a co-father. In some cases, however, parenthood already established by a foreign court decision can be recognized in Germany without a stepchild adoption, for example where a child was born through surrogacy abroad. Whether this is possible depends on the individual case, and our family lawyers assess it as part of their advice.

No reform of German parentage law has yet come into force, so married couples of two women still need a stepchild adoption to become joint legal parents. Opposite-sex married couples face no such requirement. This has been debated since registered same-sex partnerships were introduced, and even more so since same-sex marriage was introduced. The question is whether the difference breaches the German Basic Law (Grundgesetz, GG), in particular the principle of equality under Article 3 and the protection of parental rights under Article 6.

In 2018, the Federal Court of Justice (Bundesgerichtshof, BGH) ruled that the wife of the woman who gives birth does not become the child’s second parent, either directly under Section 1592 no. 1 BGB or by analogy (decision of October 10, 2018, XII ZB 231/18). The court gave two reasons:

• when the legislature introduced same-sex marriage, it deliberately left parentage law unchanged, and
• the rule for husbands rests on the assumption that the husband is usually the child’s biological father, which cannot apply to the mother’s wife.

In the BGH’s view, this difference in treatment does not breach the Basic Law or the European Convention on Human Rights.

In 2021, the Higher Regional Court of Celle agreed with the BGH that the mother’s wife cannot become a co-mother through interpretation or analogy (decision of March 24, 2021, 21 UF 146/20). Unlike the BGH, however, it concluded that this gap in the law is unconstitutional. In the court’s view, Section 1592 BGB violates the wife’s parental rights under Article 6(2) GG, read together with the principle of equality under Article 3(1) GG, as well as the child’s right to be cared for and raised by their parents. The court also held that the couple could not reasonably be expected to use stepchild adoption instead, given the assessment, probationary period, and delay it involves. It referred the question to the Federal Constitutional Court (Bundesverfassungsgericht, BVerfG).

The reform effort since then has unfolded in several steps:

• January 2024: the Federal Ministry of Justice presented key points for a reform of German parentage law.
• December 9, 2024: after the end of the governing coalition, the planned draft bill was published only as a discussion draft.
• May 23, 2025: the Bundesrat, the chamber representing Germany’s federal states, passed a resolution calling for reform to give two-mother families equal legal status. This is a political signal, not legislation.
• 2026: the legislature reformed only the rules on challenges to paternity by biological fathers, a separate area of law that does not address co-motherhood.

If the reform is enacted in the form currently under discussion, the main changes would be:

• Same-sex married couples would no longer need a stepchild adoption. Where a child is born into a marriage between two women, both women would automatically be the child’s legal mothers, unless otherwise agreed.
• Where the two women are not married, the birth mother’s partner would be able to acknowledge motherhood with the birth mother’s consent.
• The two-parent principle would remain, but a second woman could become a legal mother alongside the birth mother, either through marriage or through acknowledgment.
• Transitional arrangements would apply to children born after the introduction of same-sex marriage who have not yet been adopted.

Since the legislative process currently has no fixed timetable, we advise couples to follow developments and use the existing adoption routes in the meantime. Our family law team monitors both the court proceedings and the reform process, and keeps clients informed of new developments.

A stepchild adoption permanently changes a child’s legal family, so the preparation matters as much as the application itself. At Schlun & Elseven Rechtsanwälte, our family lawyers check whether the requirements are met and coordinate the counseling, consents, and notarization. We prepare the application to the family court and advise on what the adoption means for custody, maintenance, inheritance, the child’s surname, and their nationality. For international families, we also assess how the adoption will be treated in other countries.

Our lawyers advise in English, work fully remotely where necessary, and act for clients from all over the world. Every matter is handled in confidence, and we set out the expected costs at the outset. Have your situation reviewed by our family law team.