The first official steps for a family arriving in Germany
Residence registration, tax ID, child benefit, childcare place. The order in which these four connect, and where families lose months.
The first four official steps for a family in Germany are not difficult. They are chained. Each one depends on the one before it, and anyone who does not know the order waits in the wrong place.
Everything below was checked against the primary source on 19 August 2026. Details and responsibilities differ by federal state and municipality.
1. Registering at the Bürgeramt
Anyone moving into a flat must register with the residents' registration office within two weeks (§ 17 BMG). The landlord has to confirm the move-in; without that Wohnungsgeberbestätigung the appointment does not conclude.
This is the step everything else hangs on. No registration, no tax identification number; no tax ID, no child benefit; and in many cities no registered address means no entry into the childcare application system.
In large cities, getting the appointment is the real bottleneck. Book it as soon as the move-in date is fixed, not after the move.
2. Waiting for the tax ID
The tax identification number arrives automatically by post after registration, separately for every family member, newborns included. You do not apply for it. You wait for it, and you keep the letter.
3. Kindergeld at the Familienkasse
The application goes to the Familienkasse of the Federal Employment Agency. The form requires the tax ID of the person applying and that of the child (Familienportal des Bundes).
This is where families lose the most money: Kindergeld is paid retroactively only for the six months before the application arrives. Waiting nine months until every paper is together means losing three of them. Filing incomplete and following up beats filing complete and late.
4. The childcare place
Every child is entitled, from their first birthday onwards, to early education in a day-care setting or in childminding (§ 24 SGB VIII). The entitlement holds nationwide; how and when you apply is set by each municipality, often through its own portal and often with lead times of a year or more.
The entitlement can be enforced in court. That only helps people who applied in time and kept the rejections.
One example from our own form, because it is the same kind of failure. In the place search during signup you have to type and then pick a result from the list. Many people typed and moved on; the field looked filled in. On 14 August we wrote one sentence underneath it: "Search, then pick the place from the list." Nine words. Forms rarely fail on the hard questions.
What these four steps do not cover is the question that comes afterwards: who else actually lives here. We built Kinavela for that, with distance ranges instead of addresses and no public child profiles. The forms you still have to fill in yourself.