Bringing your husband, wife or children

You will be told this is impossible. You will also be told your spouse can follow in two or three months. Both are wrong. There is a route in the statute, it turns on one condition you cannot fix afterwards, and the money test is a sum you can influence — not the automatic no it is usually described as.

A lot of guidance says family reunification is simply not available to someone on a training permit. That is too strong. The route exists in the statute. What is true is that the conditions are strict, one of them is decided before you ever leave Nepal, and the last one is about money.

Your spouse: the condition that is decided before you fly

Spouse reunification is § 30 of the Residence Act. It lists the permits a sponsor may hold, and the one that catches an Ausbildung is § 30 Abs. 1 Satz 1 Nr. 3 lit. e:

…eine Aufenthaltserlaubnis nach § 7 Absatz 1 Satz 3 oder nach den Abschnitten 3, 4, 5 oder 6 … besitzt, die Ehe bei deren Erteilung bereits bestand und die Dauer seines Aufenthalts im Bundesgebiet voraussichtlich über ein Jahr betragen wird

The training permit, § 16a, sits in Abschnitt 3. So it is covered. Note that the paragraph never mentions § 16a by name — searching for the number finds nothing, which is why so many people conclude the answer is no.¹²

Two conditions come with it:

The marriage must already have existed when your training permit was granted. This is the one that cannot be repaired afterwards. If you marry after you arrive in Germany, this route closes, and you fall back on the general rule that the sponsor must have held the permit and lived in Germany for two years. For a three-year Ausbildung that is most of your training gone.³

Your stay must be expected to exceed one year. A normal three-year Ausbildung satisfies this comfortably.

Then the ordinary spouse conditions: both of you must be 18, and your spouse must be able to "sich zumindest auf einfache Art in deutscher Sprache verständigen" — communicate in simple German, meaning A1. The embassy in Kathmandu asks for that certificate to be no older than six months.⁴⁵

The immigration authority in Frankfurt, which publishes a page specifically for the families of trainees, states the same two-part test — two years' lawful residence on the training permit, or the marriage already existing when it was granted — and confirms reunification is open to spouses, same-sex partners and children of § 16a holders.⁶

Your children

This one is better than most people expect. § 32 Abs. 1 Nr. 1 grants a residence permit to a minor unmarried child where the parent holds "eine Aufenthaltserlaubnis … nach Abschnitt 3 oder 4" — again, the section that contains § 16a. The wording is "ist … zu erteilen": where the conditions are met this is an entitlement, not a favour.⁷

But read the opening words carefully. The permit goes to the child of a foreign national where both parents, or the sole parent holding custody, hold such a permit. If you are going alone and your child's other parent stays in Nepal with shared custody, that sentence does not fit you.⁷

§ 32 Abs. 3 is the answer to that: with joint custody a permit should be granted for the child to join just one parent, provided the other parent has declared their consent, or a competent authority has ruled to that effect. In practice that means a custody document and a written, translated consent — prepare it early.⁸

One more trap: a child who has turned 16 and is not moving to Germany together with their parents must either have command of German or show that their education and circumstances make integration likely (§ 32 Abs. 2). A 15-year-old and a 16-year-old are not in the same position.⁹

The test that actually decides it: money and a flat

Whichever route applies, two general conditions sit on top.

Adequate housing must be available (§ 29 Abs. 1 Nr. 2). You will be asked for a tenancy agreement and proof of the rent.¹⁰

And "adequate" includes big enough. This is the part people miss. A room that is perfectly fine for one trainee does not become a home for two just because two people are willing to live in it. The law sets the standard by reference to social housing: § 2 Abs. 4 asks for no more than "für die Unterbringung eines Wohnungssuchenden in einer öffentlich geförderten Sozialmietwohnung genügt", and children under two are not counted at all.¹¹ In administrative practice that is read as 12 m² for every family member over six and 10 m² for every one under six, with reasonable shared use of kitchen, bathroom and WC — and falling about ten per cent short is treated as harmless. For a couple, that puts the working floor at roughly 24 m² of living space.¹²

Those square metres are administrative guidance rather than a formula the authority is bound by, and the Länder may set their own rules. Ask the Ausländerbehörde for the town you will actually live in before you sign a tenancy, not after — the flat is easier to choose than to change.

The family's livelihood must be secured (§ 5 Abs. 1 Nr. 1), and that expressly includes adequate health insurance. Frankfurt lists what it will accept as proof: savings shown on a statement from a German bank no more than two weeks old, or a formal undertaking (Verpflichtungserklärung) by a third person.¹³¹⁴

Here is where most guidance stops, with a shrug and the words "generally not possible". That is where it goes wrong. This is a sum, not a verdict — and a sum has more than one term in it. A trainee's wage genuinely can support two people. Whether it does in your case depends on four things, and three of them you can influence.

1. Which trade you train in. Ausbildungsvergütung is not one number. It varies by trade, by region and by whether the employer pays a collective wage. Care work is currently at the top end: under the TVöD public-sector collective agreement, trainee nursing pay runs at roughly €1,490 in the first year, €1,552 in the second and €1,653 in the third, gross. Across trades generally, nursing trainees average somewhere between about €1,200 and €1,400 a month. A retail or hospitality trainee may be on considerably less. The trade you choose changes this sum more than anything else you can do.¹⁵¹⁶

2. Whether you work alongside the training. You may. § 16a Abs. 3 allows employment unconnected with the training of up to 20 hours a week. That is a substantial addition to a trainee wage, and a great many people do not know it is permitted. It has to be reconcilable with actually passing your Ausbildung, which is the point of being there — but as a matter of law the hours are available.¹⁷

3. Where you live. Rent is the largest single item and it varies enormously across Germany. The same wage that fails in Munich or Frankfurt can be comfortable in a town in the Ruhrgebiet or rural Bavaria. Some employers — care homes and hotels especially — provide accommodation, or subsidise it. If an employer offers housing, that is worth more to this calculation than a slightly higher wage, and it is a fair thing to ask about at interview.¹⁶

4. Whether your spouse works. They may. Frankfurt states that a residence permit granted for family reunification generally carries the right to work — "berechtigt die Aufenthaltserlaubnis grundsätzlich zur Erwerbstätigkeit" — as an employee or self-employed. The household is not living on one trainee wage indefinitely.¹⁸

Put those together — a well-paid trade, twenty hours a week, cheap or provided housing, and a second earner — and the sum can work. Put none of them together, in an expensive city, and it will not.

A word on the Verpflichtungserklärung, which gets recommended cheerfully. Under § 68 of the Residence Act the person signing takes on liability for your family's living costs, and it is broad and long-running. Nobody should sign one as a formality or as a favour to someone they barely know.¹⁹

The Nepali document problem

This one is specific to Nepal, it is expensive, it is slow, and no agency mentions it.

A marriage certificate or a birth certificate issued in Nepal is a foreign public document, and German authorities need to be satisfied it is genuine. For Nepal, the German embassy has stopped legalising documents altogether, with the Federal Foreign Office's approval. What replaces it is a formal verification carried out through a lawyer trusted by the embassy — and the embassy is explicit that you cannot start it yourself: "Von Privatpersonen kann eine Urkundenüberprüfung hingegen nicht veranlasst werden." Only the German authority that needs the document can request it.²⁰²¹

The embassy publishes what it costs and how long it takes:

And the timing: "Die Überprüfung der Urkunden nimmt ca. drei bis sechs Monate in Anspruch." Three to six months.²²

Read that against a promise that your husband will join you in two or three months. If the marriage certificate is checked at all, the check alone can take longer than the whole timescale you were given — and it is charged per document, so a marriage certificate and two birth certificates are three fees.

The visa itself

Your family cannot simply arrive. They apply at the German embassy in Kathmandu, which lists Ehegattennachzug and Familienzusammenführung Minderjähriger as their own national visa categories. The embassy's published minimum is that processing takes at least three months, and it can be extended by around six weeks where documents have to be checked.²³

The 8 to 12 month waiting-list figure the embassy publishes is attached to Au-Pair and FSJ visas. The embassy has separately told us the waiting lists "treffen alle gleich" — they apply to everyone alike. How appointments are allocated for family reunification specifically, we have not confirmed. Treat the three-month minimum as a floor, not an estimate.²⁴²⁵

Once in Germany, the residence permit is issued for at most as long as your own — your family's status is tied to your training permit. Frankfurt charges €100 for an adult and €50 for a child; fees are set locally and other cities may differ.²⁶

What is settled, and what is not

Settled, from the statute and named authorities: the route exists for a spouse and for minor children; the marriage must pre-date the training permit unless you wait two years; A1 German for the spouse; housing and secured livelihood are required; you may work up to 20 hours a week alongside your training; the joining spouse may generally work; Nepali documents cannot be legalised, and verification costs and takes what the table above says.

Not settled, and nobody should tell you otherwise: whether a spouse's future earnings count at the application stage, before they have a job; how quickly Kathmandu allocates appointments in this category; and how a particular Ausländerbehörde — they differ, and they are entitled to — will handle your file.

Those are the questions to take to a lawyer. They are not questions an agency in Kathmandu can answer, and if one gives you a confident answer with a timescale attached, that is a reason to be careful, not reassured.