Seeking Advice - German Survisor Benifits

[AndrewL]

My sister-in-law was married to German gentleman. He died several years ago leaving her and two children. The two children have German Passports. Recently my sister-in-law died of cancer leaving the two boys without any parents. Apparently she was recieving some sort of benifit from Germany. None of us are German speakers making this all very difficult.

Can anyone tell me in general what the rules are and give advise on how to investigate this benifit to these two kids? I have only a vague notion of where to begin. Is there an agency in Germany which deals with this sort of thing? What sort of documentation is required? What sort of translations will be acceptable? Where is the best place to go?

Thank you very much in advance.

[lannarebirth]

My sister-in-law was married to German gentleman. He died several years ago leaving her and two children. The two children have German Passports. Recently my sister-in-law died of cancer leaving the two boys without any parents. Apparently she was recieving some sort of benifit from Germany. None of us are German speakers making this all very difficult.

Can anyone tell me in general what the rules are and give advise on how to investigate this benifit to these two kids? I have only a vague notion of where to begin. Is there an agency in Germany which deals with this sort of thing? What sort of documentation is required? What sort of translations will be acceptable? Where is the best place to go?

Thank you very much in advance.

How very unfortunate for these children. I'm almost certain there must exist some type of survivors benefits they are entitled to. Why don't you begin with inquiries at either the German Embassy in Bangkok or one of the consulates?

http://germany.visahq.com/embassy/Thailand/

[patatillo]

I also would suggest that you contact the emabssy as the two children have the german citzenship.

Anyway should you need any more help, just contact me as i am here in germany

[snowgard]

Here you can find more information? Maybe you use the contact-form.

Sorry, i cannot post a url. Google for "deutsche rentenversicherung". On the website you can change the language to english.

[jts-khorat]

My sister-in-law was married to German gentleman. He died several years ago leaving her and two children. The two children have German Passports. Recently my sister-in-law died of cancer leaving the two boys without any parents. Apparently she was recieving some sort of benifit from Germany. None of us are German speakers making this all very difficult.

Can anyone tell me in general what the rules are and give advise on how to investigate this benifit to these two kids? I have only a vague notion of where to begin. Is there an agency in Germany which deals with this sort of thing? What sort of documentation is required? What sort of translations will be acceptable? Where is the best place to go?

Thank you very much in advance.

How very unfortunate for these children. I'm almost certain there must exist some type of survivors benefits they are entitled to. Why don't you begin with inquiries at either the German Embassy in Bangkok or one of the consulates?

http://germany.visahq.com/embassy/Thailand/

As the children have German passports, they are registered with authorities there. Preseumably they should be entitled for benefits for their schooling and upbringing but I am just guessing here (I am German BTW).

The obvious way is contacting the embassy; you will note that at first you most likely will end up with a Thai national handling the easy questions who will point you in the right directions or will even be able to answer them right away. They do obviously speak German but for you more importantly they will obviously also speak Thai and some of them are very competent.

After that you will get forwarded to a supervisor who will handle your case from then on who will be German. English should be well understood and spoken nevertheless, so your worries about language ability are very premature; the chances that they will speak Thai are most likely minimal however.

I would assume that at some point in time a visit to the embassy will be in order, with the children. Also then I would not expect language to be the hurdle here; the German authorities should have the documentation of the children already and even where local documentation will be needed, translation services are readily available and it is just standard procedure.

If in doubt that you can handle it all alone, there should be a good number of law offices more or less specializing in handling the contact, but at a price; I would not think they are needed if your request is not totally out of the ordinary (which does not really seem to be the case, this exact scenario must have happened hundreds of times before).

The real hurdle most likely will be time. Getting through a bureaucratic process can take incredible amounts of time, most of it spent waiting. But again, you will see that when you get that far and it is premature to worry about it right now (and nothing you could do about it anyway).

Immediate action: call the embassy directly and find out which department of the embassy is relevant and get the name of a case worker, with which you will communicate from then on.

My experience shows, expect to try to call many times, people there have a high work load and will not jump on every ringing of the phone. But after you have a direct number they are as efficient as is possible.

[AndrewL]

Thank you all for the advise. We have found a friend of a relative who works in the German Consulat in Chiang Mai. I will try to let you all know how it turns out.

Andrew