Several years sickness benefit for the care of a dying child

BSG: Also new beginning parental leave does not preclude claim
(Jur). The sickness benefit for the care of dying children is "basically unlimited". This was emphasized by the Federal Social Court (BSG) on Thursday, 18 February 2016 in Kassel (ref .: B 3 KR 10/15 R). Thereafter, it does not preclude further payment if a parent with an existing entitlement to "child sickness benefit" also goes on parental leave and receives parental allowance.

Image: Tobilander - fotolia

According to the law, parents receive sick pay for ten days a year to care for their sick children under the age of twelve; for single parents it is 20 days a year. In addition, there is a claim if the child has a serious and incurable disease that "only gives a limited life expectancy of weeks or months".

In the specific case, the son had the rare, genetically-induced metabolic disease adrenoleukodystrophy (ALD). It is inherited almost exclusively from mothers to their sons. ALD was known in 1992 by the US film "Lorenzo's oil". The disease leads to a nervous deterioration and thereby to the loss of vital body functions.

The son died eleven years old in August 2012. The mother, a medical assistant, had previously cared for the child for over three years. At first, she had been receiving child sickness allowance for about 700 days. Because of the birth of a second child, she was then in maternity leave, so that the sick pay claim rested.

Thereafter, the health insurance did not want to resume their sick pay payments. After all, she now gets parental allowance. In addition, according to the law, she could only claim sickness benefit if she had previously been unable to work. That was not the case with the medical assistant.

However, according to the BSG, the legislator wanted to ensure that an existing entitlement to sickness benefit was not interrupted by parental leave. The fact that the wording used does not match the wording of the pediatric sickness allowance is a "mistake of editorial".

The Kassel judges also emphasized that the legal requirement for only a short life expectancy concerns only the medical prognoses. If these do not occur, as is the case here, the right to child sickness benefit is "basically unlimited".

The lawyer of the mother said on the sidelines of the trial in Kassel that the second son ALD has not inherited and is healthy. The former employer, a doctor, had kept her mother's job free so that she was again working as a medical assistant in practice. (Mwo / fle)