Employees are entitled to parental leave based on the Parental Allowance and Parental Leave Act (BEEG). They can take unpaid leave if they look after and raise their child themselves during this time.
However, they must adhere to certain rules, as lawyer Axel Salzmann explains in the VerkehrsRundschau legal blog. Subscribers can read this for free on the professional portal VRplus.
Among other things, the employee must apply for parental leave from their employer and adhere to certain deadlines: for a child up to three years old, this period is seven weeks; if the child is older, it is 13 weeks. In this case, however, the child must be no older than eight years old.
The employee can also apply for part-time employment as part of parental leave. However, the company can reject this application for urgent operational reasons.
Subscribers to the legal blog can find out in which other cases a rejection is possible, how the legislator ensures more planning, whether the employee can split his parental leave and other facts on the subject.
