Won by the ÖH: The student receives € 7,200 in family allowance paid retroactively for the last 37 months.
Student K, who comes from another EU country, has been living in Austria for several years. She consults the Austrian Student Union (ÖH) for advice on funding opportunities.
K moves to Austria in the fall of 2014 for her studies. A year later, she begins working while studying and has been sustaining herself through salaries and savings ever since. Depending on her needs and compatibility with her studies, she works between 8 and 25 hours per week. Her parents live in the home country and have a very low income. Since the fall of 2015, K has not received any child support at all from her parents. K is studying with determination and is now in the 7th semester of her bachelor’s degree.
The social department of the Austrian Student Union (ÖH) recommends that she apply for family allowance at the tax office of her place of residence. The ÖH supports with an explanatory legal statement on its application. As a non-Austrian, K always assumed that she was not entitled to family allowance.
Since K has been fully self-supporting since taking up her job, she meets the eligibility requirements for a personal claim to family allowance. If the parents mainly finance the maintenance costs for their studying children or if the students still live at home, the parents are generally entitled to family allowance if they themselves have their habitual residence in Austria. However, students whose parents do not support them or do not predominantly support them may receive family allowance for themselves if they (predominantly) support themselves. In these cases, the student’s or students’ habitual residence in Germany is relevant, not that of their parents. This is intended to support students who must be predominantly self-sustaining, regardless of whether their parents cannot afford or simply refuse to provide financial support for their children. K can also claim family allowance for the past, as family allowance can be claimed retroactively for up to five years.
Won by the ÖH: The student receives € 7,200 in family allowance paid retroactively for the last 37 months.
Further successes from consulting at www.oeh.ac.at/geschafft
