Long story short, partner had a surgery and needed assistance for a period right after due to limited mobility. I thought I needed to take vacations for this, so I took a few days.
However reading about this situation again, there’s something called "Nursing time"where employees are entitled for temporary leave to care for close family members, and this would be paid by the relative’s Pflegeversicherung.
With this new information in hand, I contacted HR to retroactively try to reclaim my vacation days, by showing proof from the clinic that my partner needed close care for 2 days. They replied they cannot do that and that I indeed needed to have spent my vacation days for this situation.
Anyone ever had a similar situation before? Is HR being just lazy/incompetent here or is there something I’m missing?
Sources:
https://old.reddit.com/r/germany/comments/1cgnvm3/temporary_caretaking_of_partner_understanding/
Posted by khariel
2 Comments
I think you might mean “pflegeunterstützungsgeld” which is paid when you take unpaid leave to take care of someone.
As far as I know if you used vacation days you can’t get them back after it already happened.
Normally you need to take unpaid leave and then ask the health insurance of the person you’re caring for after the “pflegeunterstûtzungsgeld”
You should call your partners health insurance and ask them directly.
Without all the infos we can’t tell you for sure how it is in your case.
Best of luck 🙂
Ps: I know that “pflege” is a highly complex topic with many different subtopics and my answer is just for the standard case
What was the reason the company gave you?
My guess is because just being someone’s partner in practice isn’t enough – it needs to be an official thing, see https://www.tk.de/firmenkunden/versicherung/versicherung-faq/haeufige-fragen-zur-pflegezeit/wer-gilt-als-naher-angehoeriger-2036510