Short Answer The Federal Parental Allowance and Parental Leave Act grants you absolute protection against dismissal from the moment your formal parental leave request reaches your employer. For children born on or after 1 May 2025, that request is valid in simple text form — a clear email counts — while older children still require the classic paper letter with a wet-ink signature. What Most Expats Don't Realize You mentioned your parental leave plans to your manager in a hallway conversation and considered the matter settled, never sending anything in writing. The company used this gap to issue a standard corporate redundancy termination — and because a verbal remark triggers no statutory protection whatsoever, the notice was perfectly timed and perfectly legal on its face. You had to spend €2,500 on legal fees disputing a termination that a single formal email, sent the same week, would have made impossible. What To Do * Submit your parental leave request in writing at least seven weeks before your planned start date — by email for children born on or after 1 May 2025, on signed paper for earlier births. * Know that the special protection (Sonderkündigungsschutz) activates the moment your request lands, at the earliest eight weeks before the leave begins — which also makes a swift email a legitimate shield if you sense a termination coming. * "Bitte bestätigen Sie mir den Erhalt meines Elternzeitantrags schriftlich." (Please confirm the receipt of my parental leave application in writing.) — ask your HR clerk for a confirmation to prove the submission date.