Aufhebungsvertrag: Termination Agreements, Severance and the Sperrzeit in Germany

A German employer that wants an employee gone often does not send a Kündigung at all. It sends an Aufhebungsvertrag, a proposed contract ending the job by mutual agreement, usually with a severance figure attached and a short deadline to sign. Because it arrives framed as a favour rather than a fight, it is easy to sign in the room before working out what it actually changes.

The clause that catches the most people is not in the contract itself. It sits in social security law, and it decides whether Arbeitslosengeld I starts on day one of unemployment or twelve weeks later, and how much of it is lost altogether. This page works through that consequence in detail, alongside what the rest of a properly drafted agreement should cover.

Information last verified on 19 July 2026. This page provides general legal information and does not constitute legal advice in an individual case.

What an Aufhebungsvertrag actually is

An Aufhebungsvertrag is a contract, not a notice. Both sides sign it, both sides agree the end date, and neither side is exercising a one sided right to terminate. That single feature separates it from a Kündigung by the employer or the employee, and it drives almost every consequence described below.

Because it is a contract ending an employment relationship, § 623 BGB requires signed written form for it to be valid at all. A termination agreed by email, text message, or a verbal handshake in a meeting has no legal effect under German law, whatever was actually said.

The mutual nature also removes a protection a dismissed employee would otherwise have. There is generally no Kündigungsschutzklage after an Aufhebungsvertrag, because there is no Kündigung to challenge, and no equivalent of the three week deadline that runs from a dismissal notice. Once both signatures are on the page, the agreement is the new baseline. Termination by employer covers the process where that three week clock and the Kündigungsschutzgesetz protections still apply.

The unemployment benefit consequence: Sperrzeit under § 159 SGB III

This is the part most people discover only after they have already signed. § 159 SGB III treats an employee who ends their own employment relationship, or who brings about its end through contract breaching conduct, as acting against the purpose of the unemployment insurance scheme, unless a wichtiger Grund, an important reason, applies.

Signing an Aufhebungsvertrag falls squarely inside that rule, because the employee is a party to ending the job rather than a passive recipient of a dismissal. The standard Sperrzeit for Arbeitsaufgabe under § 159 Abs. 3 SGB III is twelve weeks, and no Arbeitslosengeld I is paid for that period at all.

Shorter periods apply in defined situations. The Sperrzeit falls to six weeks where a twelve week suspension would cause a besondere Härte, a particular hardship, for the claimant, or where the employment would have ended within twelve weeks anyway even without the early agreement. It falls further, to three weeks, where the job would have ended within six weeks regardless of the agreement.

The burden of proof sits with the claimant. § 159 SGB III places the obligation on the person whose conduct is in question to show the wichtiger Grund. The Bundesagentur für Arbeit does not have to disprove one.

It is not only a twelve week delay

A Sperrzeit does two things, and the second is the one most people miss. § 148 Abs. 1 Nr. 4 SGB III reduces the total number of days of Arbeitslosengeld I the claimant can draw on that claim, by at least one quarter of the entitlement, whenever a twelve week Sperrzeit applies.

That reduction is permanent for the claim in question. It is not restored later, and it is separate from the twelve weeks of missed payments themselves. An employee who would otherwise have had twelve months of Arbeitslosengeld I available loses three of those months outright, in addition to receiving nothing during the twelve week suspension.

A separate rule: Ruhen des Anspruchs for severance and notice

§ 158 SGB III addresses a different situation on a different logic. It applies where a claimant received a severance, an Entlassungsentschädigung, and the employment ended earlier than the notice period the employer would otherwise have had to observe.

In that case, payment of Arbeitslosengeld I is suspended, not reduced, until the date the job would have ended had the ordinary notice period run its course. The severance is treated as standing in for the salary that period would otherwise have paid, so the two are not received at the same time. The suspension is capped at one year and shortens if the claimant takes new work and earns back a defined share of the severance through it.

The distinction matters because the two rules can both touch the same Aufhebungsvertrag for different reasons, and they are not interchangeable. A Sperrzeit is a penalty for the manner of ending the job. A Ruhen des Anspruchs is a timing adjustment for a severance that already covers the notice period.

How employers and employees commonly avoid the Sperrzeit

A wichtiger Grund is not automatic, but German practice has settled around a well understood route: an Aufhebungsvertrag offered in place of an otherwise lawful betriebsbedingte Kündigung, a dismissal for operational reasons.

The Bundesagentur für Arbeit's own internal guidance to § 159 SGB III sets out several conditions under which the agency typically will not conduct a substantive review of whether the threatened dismissal would actually have held up. A dismissal must genuinely have been in prospect, on operational or personal rather than conduct grounds, against an employee who was not protected from ordinary dismissal, and the agreement must not bring the end date forward. Alongside those, the agreed end date must respect the notice period the employer would otherwise have had to give, and the severance should sit within a customary range of up to 0.5 gross monthly salaries for each year of service, the same figure used as the reference amount under § 1a KSchG. A severance well above that range, or an end date that ignores the required notice, invites the closer look the guidance otherwise avoids.

This is internal guidance the agency applies in practice, not a formula written into § 159 SGB III itself, and it can be revised. Notice periods under § 622 BGB are the reference point for whether an agreement actually respects the required run up.

There is no statutory right to an Abfindung

A severance in an Aufhebungsvertrag is negotiated, not owed. German law contains exactly one narrow statutory severance provision, § 1a KSchG, and it applies only to a specific kind of Kündigung, not to a termination agreement: the employer must dismiss for urgent operational reasons, say so in the notice, and the employee must let the three week challenge window expire without suing. That mechanism produces the 0.5 monthly earnings per year of service figure that severance practice generally borrows.

An Aufhebungsvertrag sits outside that mechanism entirely. Whatever severance figure appears in the contract exists because the parties agreed to it, most often because the employer wants a clean exit without the delay and uncertainty of a contested dismissal. Severance pay works through how that negotiation typically plays out and what leverage each side actually has.

A worked example

Consider an employee on a gross salary of EUR 4,200 a month, with six complete years of service, whose employer proposes an Aufhebungsvertrag in place of a threatened betriebsbedingte Kündigung.

Applying the 0.5 month per year convention gives a severance of 0.5 times EUR 4,200 times 6, which is EUR 12,600. If the agreed end date matches the notice period § 622 BGB would have required for that tenure, and the severance sits inside the customary range, the agreement has a real prospect of being treated as a wichtiger Grund and avoiding the Sperrzeit.

If instead the employee simply wants to leave early and there is no threatened dismissal behind the agreement, a wichtiger Grund is much harder to establish. Take an employee who would otherwise have twelve months of Arbeitslosengeld I available. A twelve week Sperrzeit means twelve weeks with no payment at all, and § 148 Abs. 1 Nr. 4 SGB III then removes a further quarter, three months, from the total entitlement. Two similar looking agreements can produce very different outcomes at the Agentur für Arbeit depending on why the agreement exists.

What a well drafted agreement should settle

A short Aufhebungsvertrag that states only an end date and a severance figure leaves too much unresolved. A complete agreement typically fixes each of the following in writing.

On the Arbeitszeugnis specifically, § 109 GewO requires the reference to be clear and comprehensible and bans hidden coded wording, but the further requirement that it also be benevolent and truthful comes from Bundesarbeitsgericht case law layered on top of the statute, not from the text of § 109 GewO itself. The Arbeitszeugnis explains how the grading language works and what particular phrases actually signal.

On a post contractual non compete, § 74 Abs. 2 HGB requires the employer to pay at least half of the employee's last contractual remuneration for every year the restriction runs, for the covenant to bind the employee at all. An Aufhebungsvertrag is the natural place to settle whether an existing non compete survives the exit, since leaving it unaddressed does not make it disappear.

Tax treatment of the severance

A severance is taxed as employment income, but it usually qualifies as an außerordentliche Einkunft, extraordinary income, under § 34 EStG, together with the Entschädigungen described in § 24 Nr. 1 EStG. The Fünftelregelung spreads the tax effect of that lump sum as though it had been earned over five years, softening the progressive rate compared with taxing all of it in one year.

One detail changed for payments from 1 January 2025. The employer no longer applies the Fünftelregelung during wage tax withholding under § 39b EStG, following the Wachstumschancengesetz. The relief itself was not abolished. It moved: the employee now claims it through the annual Einkommensteuererklärung instead of seeing it reflected on the payslip at payout, which changes the timing of the benefit and not its existence.

Can you get out of an Aufhebungsvertrag once you have signed it

There is no general statutory right to withdraw from a signed Aufhebungsvertrag, and no equivalent of a consumer contract cooling off period. Once both signatures are on the page, the contract stands unless it is successfully challenged.

The Bundesarbeitsgericht has recognised one narrow route: the Gebot des fairen Verhandelns, a duty arising from §§ 311 Abs. 2 Nr. 1 and 241 Abs. 2 BGB not to exploit an unfair negotiating situation. In its decision of 07.02.2019, 6 AZR 75/18, the court held an agreement ineffective where the employer created or exploited a psychological pressure situation that materially impaired the employee's free decision, for example by exploiting a recognisable physical or mental weakness.

The same court narrowed the doctrine three years later. In its decision of 24.02.2022, 6 AZR 333/21, the Bundesarbeitsgericht held that requiring an employee to accept an offer immediately, in a single meeting, with no time to reflect and no chance to take advice, is not by itself a breach of the duty, even though that is precisely the situation in which most agreements are actually signed. Whether the duty was breached turns on the full circumstances of the negotiation, including any threat that was made and whether a reasonable employer could seriously have considered the alternative it raised.

Practical steps before you sign

Ask for the draft in writing and take it away from the meeting rather than signing on the spot. Nothing in German law requires a decision in the room, and a short delay to read the text carefully does not, in the ordinary case, cost the severance on offer.

Work out the unemployment benefit consequence before agreeing to anything, ideally by asking the Agentur für Arbeit directly whether the specific proposal on the table would trigger a Sperrzeit. Check the notice period the agreement actually respects, compare the severance against the customary range, and read the Arbeitszeugnis wording as carefully as the euro figure. For how this fits into German employment law more broadly, see German law explained.

Frequently asked questions