Germany Residence Deregistration (Abmeldung)

This file is the source-review record for this document version, per the manual-source-review-v1 practice. It documents the provenance of the published fields and flow, records a mock-data test run of the field set, and states the current verification claim honestly.

Current claim

• status: draft
• verification.method: manual-source-review-v1
• verification.lastVerifiedAt: 2026-07-01

The document was derived from and cross-checked against the official sources below, but the full field-by-field comparison the practice requires (manual-source-review-v1 → Procedure step 2) has not yet been completed and recorded by a second reviewer. It therefore remains draft, not verified.

Why this candidate was advanced now

de/bmi/residence-deregistration was already a tier-1 candidate in discovery/catalog.json, explicitly flagged as the sibling to the published de/bmi/residence-registration and noting that "deregistration is not required for a purely domestic move ... only for leaving Germany altogether or keeping no further German dwelling — that distinction needs confirming at authoring time." This cycle confirmed that distinction directly from the official source (see below) and authored the document.

Sources examined

• Document (id, version): de/bmi/residence-deregistration / 1.0.0
• Spec version: GovSchema 0.2.0
• Authority: Meldebehörde (local registration office), under the Bundesmeldegesetz (BMG)
• Primary source URL: https://service.berlin.de/dienstleistung/120335/ ("Abmeldung einer Wohnung" — Berlin's official service page) — fetched directly with a plain curl request, HTTP 200, no access block. Its raw HTML was read directly (not summarized) to extract the deregistration-required conditions, the 7-day-before/14-day-after time window, the fee-free status, the legal basis (BMG), the in-writing-only submission channel note ("Bitte schriftlich erledigen. Die Abmeldung kann auch auf dem Postweg erfolgen."), the required-documents note (a copy of ID card or passport when mailing), and the 3-person-per-form limit.
• Official form PDF: linked directly from the service page — https://www.berlin.de/formularverzeichnis/?formular=/labo/zentrale-einwohnerangelegenheiten/_assets/mdb-f402609-20151120_abmeldung.pdf ("Abmeldung", form id ABM_Blanko) — fetched directly, HTTP 200, no access block. Parsed with the pdf-parse npm package (PDFParse.getText()); the single-page form extracted as clean, legible text and was transcribed field-by-field from that output.
• Retrieved / reviewed: 2026-07-01
• Reviewer: GovSchema Engineering (initial authoring source-review)

Not a time-versioned (edition) form

A deregistration is a one-time filing tied to a specific move-out event, not filed "for" a recurring tax/award year — applying the GSP-0005 §2 coexistence test, there is no scenario where two editions of the Abmeldung data model need to coexist for the same applicant. This document is therefore authored at the plain (non-edition) registry path, registry/de/bmi/residence-deregistration/1.0.0/. A future form revision that changes the field set ships as a new version, not an edition.

Scope decisions

• Modeled: the previous-dwelling section, the future-dwelling section (including the case where the future dwelling is a foreign address, or where no future German dwelling exists at all), the additional-German-dwellings section, the primary registrant's personal details, and the submission/signature section.
• Out of scope — family members 2 and 3 on the same Meldeschein. The form's own footer note ("Bei mehr als 3 abzumeldenden Personen benutzen Sie bitte weitere Meldescheine") confirms the form supports up to 3 people per sheet (with a relationship-to-registrant field on persons 2/3); this document models only the primary registrant, consistent with the scoping decision already made in the sibling de/bmi/residence-registration document. Tracked under GSP-0009 (composite/repeating values), not yet accepted.
• Out of scope — the "Tagesstempel der Meldebehörde" / "Amtl. Vermerke" boxes at the top of the form, and the Gemeindekennzahl (municipality key number) fields — office-use/administrative fields, not applicant-entered data.

Fix-up: independent review finding (GOV-334)

An independent reviewer (Review Engineer) re-derived the field set directly from the primary sources — not from this document's own transcription — by fetching the Berlin service page and the Abmeldung PDF and parsing the PDF's text layer and AcroForm field/annotation objects with pdfjs-dist. That review confirmed the CI validation, the domestic-move exception, the no-online-channel claim, the timing window, the fee-free status, the identityDocumentCopy rule, the 3-person cap, and the gender-enum disclosure above, but found one blocking gap:

• Passname is a separate, independently-fillable field on the source PDF, distinct from Familienname, ggf. Doktorgrad, with its own label and its own rect in the AcroForm layer — meaning a registrant whose passport name differs from their civil family name had no field to record it in. Fixed by adding a new optional passportName field and narrowing lastName's label/sourceRef to the family-name field alone.
• Non-blocking parity note (also addressed here): the PDF's "Weitere Wohnungen (in Deutschland)" section repeats 3 times on the form (like the person 1/2/3 repetition already disclosed above), but this document models only one instance of it, consistent with the primary-registrant-only scope decision. This scope choice was previously undocumented for that specifically; it is now recorded here for parity with the 3-person-per-form disclosure.

What was confirmed against the source

• Process identity and requirement conditions. Deregistration is required only when moving abroad for good (not a temporary stay abroad, e.g. for study) or when giving up a main/secondary residence without moving into another German dwelling; a purely domestic move requires only a new Anmeldung. Confirmed verbatim (in translation) from the service page's own prose, and recorded in the document description.
• Timing, fee, and legal basis. The 7-day-before/14-day-after filing window, the fee-free status, and the Bundesmeldegesetz legal basis are confirmed directly from the service page and recorded in the document description and moveOutDate's description.
• Submission channel. The service page states deregistration must be done "schriftlich" (in writing) — either in person at a Bürgeramt or by post — and explicitly does not offer an online (Elektronische Wohnsitzanmeldung) channel, unlike the sibling registration document. Modeled as the submissionChannel enum, with the by-mail path additionally requiring identityDocumentCopy per the service page's required-documents note.
• Full form field set. The previous-dwelling address and dwelling-type fields, the future-dwelling address/country/dwelling-type/ already-existed fields, the additional-dwellings-in-Germany fields, the registrant's personal-details fields (name, birth name, gender, date/place/ country of birth, religious affiliation, nationality, religious/artistic name), and the signature field are all transcribed field-by-field from the decoded PDF text.

Mock-data test run

Per the issue's phase-4 instruction to test-run the schema with valid mock data, a representative filled-out deregistration was authored and checked field-by-field against every type/required/validation constraint in schema.json (string length, regex pattern, enum membership, date format, boolean type, and the conditional-field notes called out in field descriptions):

``json { "moveOutDate": "2026-08-15", "previousAddressPostalCode": "10115", "previousAddressMunicipality": "Berlin", "previousAddressStreet": "Torstraße", "previousAddressHouseNumber": "12", "previousDwellingType": "sole_dwelling", "hasFutureGermanDwelling": true, "futureAddressCountry": "United States", "futureAddressPostalCode": "92101", "futureAddressMunicipalityOrDistrict": "San Diego, California", "futureAddressStreet": "Harbor View Drive", "futureAddressHouseNumber": "482", "futureDwellingAlreadyExisted": false, "futureDwellingType": "sole_dwelling", "lastName": "Torres", "firstNames": "Maria Alejandra", "gender": "female", "dateOfBirth": "1990-03-14", "placeOfBirth": "San Diego", "countryOfBirth": "United States", "nationality": "American", "submissionChannel": "by_mail", "signatureDate": "2026-08-10" } ``

This models Maria Alejandra Torres — the same individual used in the sibling us/ca/sos/business-entity-llc-formation, us/ca/sos/corporation-formation-arts-gs, us/irs/employer-identification-number-ss4, us/ca/dmv/vehicle-title-transfer, us/dos/lost-or-stolen-passport-ds64, and ca/ircc/eta-application mock scenarios — deregistering her sole Berlin dwelling before permanently relocating back to San Diego, California, submitting by mail (hence identityDocumentCopy applies). The scenario exercises the hasFutureGermanDwelling: true → futureAddress* conditional group with a foreign (non-German) future address, and the submissionChannel: by_mail → identityDocumentCopy pair, while omitting the optional additional-German-dwelling fields, birthName, and religiousAffiliation/religiousOrArtisticName. A one-off Node script (node:fs + a hand-rolled per-field validator, not committed to the repo) confirmed every populated field satisfies its type and validation constraint and that no required field was left unset:

`` PASS — mock emigration deregistration (sole dwelling, moving abroad) satisfies the schema field-level constraints. ``

Both registry validators were run against the schema document itself (not the mock data) and pass:

``` $ node tools/validate.mjs registry/de/bmi/residence-deregistration/1.0.0/schema.json ok registry/de/bmi/residence-deregistration/1.0.0/schema.json

$ cd tools && node validate-ajv.mjs ../registry/de/bmi/residence-deregistration/1.0.0/schema.json ok registry/de/bmi/residence-deregistration/1.0.0/schema.json [v0.2] ```

What is NOT yet independently verified

• gender's option list was not independently re-confirmed against this specific PDF. Unlike the sibling de/bmi/residence-registration document, which confirmed the M/W/D/o.A. codes from a Munich Meldeschein PDF's own field-tooltip metadata, this Berlin Abmeldung PDF did not expose equivalent tooltip text in the extraction. The same four values are reused here by analogy (the M/W/D/o.A. convention is standard across German Meldebehörde forms nationally under Personenstandsgesetz §22 Abs. 3), but this is a reasonable inference, not an independent re-confirmation against this specific document. A reviewer should confirm directly if possible.
• Whether every German municipality's Abmeldung form matches this exact field layout. Registration/deregistration forms are issued per-Land or per-municipality in Germany (confirmed already for the sibling registration document); this document is sourced from Berlin's form specifically, per the established precedent of using Berlin as the reference municipality.
• The Gemeindekennzahl (municipality key number) fields appear on the raw PDF text but were not modeled — treated as administrative/office-use data rather than applicant input, an inference not independently confirmed against official guidance describing who completes that field.
• Constraint patterns (postal code format) are reasonable encodings, not citations of a published Meldebehörde validation rule.

Path to a verified claim (next step)

To advance this document to status: verified, a reviewer applies manual-source-review-v1 (Procedure step 2 field-by-field comparison, step 3 flow comparison) against the live Abmeldung form and service page, resolves the gender-option and Gemeindekennzahl open questions above, confirms the sources are still authoritative, resolves any discrepancy by shipping a new schema version (immutability — VERSIONING §3, practice Procedure step 5), and records the outcome here plus sets status: verified with a current verification.lastVerifiedAt / nextReviewBy. This v1.0.0 record stays as the authoring provenance.

Re-verification

Per the practice's Cadence, nextReviewBy is set to 2027-01-01 (6 months). Re-check the source on or before that date, on any source.url change, or when Berlin publishes a new Abmeldung form revision.