Insure child privately or legally
Private or statutory insurance for my child – which health insurance is the better one?
If you get the joyful news about new offspring, it is best for parents to think about their child’s health insurance before they are born. Whether a child needs private or statutory health insurance or how it can insure itself depends on how the parents are insured. In principle, it is advisable to first clarify the insurance options for the child and weigh the advantages and disadvantages of private and statutory health insurance against each other. After that, you can then decide in peace to insure the child privately or legally.
Possibilities for health insurance for children
The diagram shows the possibilities of whether a child can or must be insured privately or by law. The decisive factors here are how the parents are insured, what they earn and whether the parents are married. What many do not know is that an unmarried parent is not subject to income restrictions. There is a freedom of choice as to whether one wants to insure one’s child privately or legally as soon as one parent is insured in the GKV.
Insure child privately
Both parents in the statutory health insurance fund
If the parents are both in the statutory health insurance, the newborn child is automatically insured from birth via the family insurance with the parents free of charge. Of course, a child can also always be insured privately if the parents wish to have a higher level of insurance cover for their offspring. However, you should bear in mind that the private health insurance cover for the child must be paid in addition to the contributions of the statutory health insurance. In this case, too, admission of children to private health insurance always involves a health check. A further possibility to improve the insurance cover for the child in case of illness is the conclusion of a private supplementary health insurance. You can find good tariffs for supplementary insurance for your child in our online insurance comparison.
GKV bonus for children
Both parents have private health insurance
If both parents have private health insurance, then the child must also have private health insurance. In this case, you can simply insure the child with one of the two parent tariffs or choose an alternative tariff of another private health insurance. The advantage of insuring the child by compulsory contract is the legal obligation of the insurance company to insure the child retroactively to birth without health checks and supplements. The registration can be an informal notification with the name and date of birth of the newborn or you can use one of the many forms of the insurance which you can request from us. In general, the following requirements must be met for compulsory insurance:
- The parent has been insured with the Company for at least three months.
- The registration of the child takes place within the first two months after birth.
- The chosen insurance cover for the child does not exceed the scope of benefits of your private health insurance.
If the child is healthy, it is usually worth choosing an alternative private health insurance plan for the child. These are special children’s tariffs of private health insurance, which are usually significantly better than the parents’ tariffs in terms of contribution/benefit ratio. Unfortunately not all companies offer individual insurances for children.
One parent is private and one parent is legally insured
In this case it depends first on whether the parents are married or not. If they are not married, the parents can insure the child privately or legally. If the parents are married, the child must only be insured privately or voluntarily in the SHI if the income of the privately insured parent is above the income threshold and higher than the income of the SHI-insured spouse.
As soon as you get married, however, you lose this option, because then the income in question again becomes the insurance criterion.
The same applies analogously after a divorce. After a divorce, a child with provate insurance can change the free family insurance of the SHI again if one parent is compulsorily insured. With a good supplementary insurance in combination with a good GKV, one has then also a very good health insurance protection.