A Widowed Mom in Germany Is Fighting Cuts for Grieving Kids

Hi everyone! Kati has been a widow for six years. She has an 11-year-old son and a 16-year-old daughter. She's a civil servant, and with her widow's pension, taxed at Germany's highest withholding rate (tax class 6), she's just barely making ends meet. When she heard about the German government's new plans for child support advance payments (the state benefit that steps in when a parent doesn't pay support, and that also covers kids whose parent has died), she almost fell over…

…and knew right away: we can't let this stand. Kati immediately started a petition. Here she tells us how she and her kids are doing after their loss and what's behind her political activism. Her hope: that together we can still change the planned cuts.

Dear Kati, you've been a widow for six years. How are you and the kids doing today, emotionally, and how has your grief changed? 

We've come through some hard times okay. Everyone has to walk their own path through grief, unfortunately. Kids process things at different speeds and with different intensity, in waves. Certain triggers bring it all back up. There's anger and deep sadness, which eventually feels a little more muffled. By now we know how to handle it: give it space and accept it.

Personally, I've made the most progress with hypnosis. We live with the pain, and before holidays, on birthdays, or at big life milestones, like the first day of elementary school or starting a new chapter at middle school, it still hurts all of us very much. We cry together, too, and we let whatever comes come.

I think showing our grief and not fighting the waves is honestly the most important thing for us. Time, sadly, does not heal all wounds. None of the three of us can get behind that saying. It gets different… but it never really gets good again.

You're a civil servant, and you say you're "just barely getting by" on your widow's pension. What does that mean for your family, what's possible and what maybe isn't?

Honestly, I thought I'd be set with the widow's pension. It only becomes clear about two years later that this isn't true, when the tax break for married couples filing jointly disappears and tax class 6 really hits the widow's pension. That knocked the wind out of me, right around a big milestone for my daughter.

My kids and I are on private health insurance. As a civil servant in Germany, there's no other way. So I front the cost of every vaccination and every doctor bill. Processing the claims is a huge hassle, and I always have to double-check them or file an appeal, because so much gets cut.

My kids gave up mountain bike racing. We couldn't swing it, either time-wise or financially. One bike costs around 2,500 euros. I pay for vacations out of my old savings. I always feel guilty about it, because that money was really the cushion for both kids' college. A winter getaway is really only possible every couple of years, for a few days in the Ore Mountains, a mountain region in eastern Germany.

There are hardly any name-brand clothes anymore, and I look for sales on both groceries and clothing. That wasn't the case before. Mostly I cut back on myself. The kids' current hobbies, rowing and dancing, are still affordable. 

In my work as a grief counselor, many widows and widowers tell me that bureaucracy makes life EVEN harder in the middle of grief. Can you relate?

Absolutely. I felt like the ground had been pulled out from under me, and for two years it didn't stop: letters kept coming, closing accounts dragged on, and I had to fight to provide financially for my kids, even though I manage public EU funds for a living and I support my kids financially on top of what they inherited.

Settling the estate, which my kids and I inherited jointly, took three years. Looking back, it's unbelievable how much time and energy I put into it. The battle with the tax office. Proof for the insurance companies… and every year, showing the school proof of my sole custody along with the death certificate. That's really exhausting, because it felt like I never got to rest.

In your opinion, what needs to change for surviving family members? 

We need someone to guide us through the jungle of government offices, someone who also supports us emotionally. Every letter that arrives still addressed to the husband does something to you. And yet you still have everyday life to handle. I could probably have gotten household help for six months. That wasn't possible during the COVID pandemic. On top of everything else, the whole country was in lockdown.

So what's needed is day-to-day support, grief support, and financial counseling. There's hardly any help for getting information as a widowed single mom, and above all, there's no time. For example, I only read about child support advance payments in a forum three years ago and then applied. I didn't know it was available when the father has died, too.

Now child support advance payments are no longer going to be reliably paid until a child's 18th birthday. How did you feel when you first heard that? 

Honestly, I was shocked, and at first I thought it was just an idea being floated that hopefully wasn't meant seriously. I'm angry that anyone sees savings potential where there is truly nothing to save. First of all, kids are our future.

Second, the reasoning that a parent can simply go back to working full time once the kid turns 16 is an absolute joke. A lot of us have more than one child, and then I'd be punishing my younger ones and no longer taking care of them fully… and plenty of parents already work full time and it's still not enough.

My day starts at 5 a.m. and ends at 10 p.m. with folding laundry or housework, paying bills or doing paperwork. I'd love to book two extra hours a day from the universe. Then I could work more and still handle all the driving in a rural area, quiz them on material for the next test, work on presentations together, cook, do laundry, and shop.

It's often really easy to say… and reality is already hard enough. So a demand like this is just a slap in the face to every widowed parent, who's been putting their own needs last for years anyway.

You also say that costs go up for kids from age 12 on, with growth spurts, school, hobbies, and a social life. And some municipalities stop paying for school buses or travel costs at 16. What can we do about this social injustice?

I think the only thing that helps is organized protest, and getting politically involved with the parties that REALLY stand up for social causes. I reached out to members of the Bundestag, Germany's parliament. Unfortunately, they couldn't help either. It takes majorities and, above all, no indifference toward democracy. Together, we can make a difference.

You've now started a petition for more educational equality despite the loss of a parent, because there are 500,000 widowed single parents in Germany! How did you come up with the idea? 

Honestly, it was just a spur-of-the-moment idea. I checked whether an initiative already existed… and there wasn't one. I happen to be on vacation right now, otherwise I wouldn't have had the time. I had already written to Germany's federal family minister. So I thought, just do it. Every journey begins with a single step. This way I don't have to blame myself for just standing by. I like taking matters into my own hands and getting things done. That's how it was with the petition, too. If we don't stand up for ourselves, who will?

You write that some kids who've lost a parent might leave school after 10th grade even though they actually want to finish high school and earn their Abitur (the German university-entrance diploma), just to start earning money sooner… how does that thought sit with you?

I can hardly stand it. Kids who've lost a parent, or who have just one parent, already have a harder time in the education system. We're a welfare state. It has to be possible to have educational equality here. That would be unthinkable in the Scandinavian countries. Of course my kids should be allowed to finish high school and go to college if that's what they want. They already carry enough and have suffered enough. I'll always fight like a mama bear for their future… and if I can fight for others at the same time, I'll do that, too.

What are you asking for? 

I'm demanding that kids who've lost one or both parents receive state support until they're 18 and be allowed to pursue college without financial hardship.

If you'd like to sign, here's the petition.