Sum Known, Claim Pending: § 21 Nr. 3 and the Wohngeldbehörde

By the end of this chapter you will be able to tell an amount from a claim, recognise a question the Act leaves to the authority, and read the request the model addresses to it.

1. The question

The Vogts’ file arrives at the Wohngeldbehörde in Weimar. Everything is complete — household, rent, income — except one thing: the office has not yet assessed whether claiming Wohngeld would be abusive.

Predict before you read on. What should a model say about the claim to €485 now: established, not established, or something else?

2. The text

§ 21 WoGG lists three cases in which no claim exists:

Ein Wohngeldanspruch besteht nicht, 1. wenn das Wohngeld weniger als 10 Euro monatlich betragen würde, 2. wenn alle Haushaltsmitglieder nach den §§ 7 und 8 Abs. 1 vom Wohngeld ausgeschlossen sind oder 3. soweit die Inanspruchnahme missbräuchlich wäre, insbesondere wegen erheblichen Vermögens.

In English: no claim exists (1) if the Wohngeld would be under €10 a month, (2) if all household members are excluded, or (3) to the extent that claiming it would be abusive, in particular because of considerable assets.

Numbers 1 and 2 are tests the model can run. Number 3 is different. “Missbräuchlich” — abusive — is an evaluative word. The Act gives no threshold for “considerable assets”; the office must weigh the circumstances of the case. The model leaves that weighing to the Wohngeldbehörde rather than to a formula — a choice about where its automation stops.

3. How the model holds the judgment

The model declares the judgment as a relation that, in this model, only an authority can settle:

pub external judgment relation missbraeuchliche_inanspruchnahme(h: Haushalt) {
    authority Wohngeldbehoerde;
    label de official "die Inanspruchnahme von Wohngeld wäre missbräuchlich, insbesondere wegen erheblichen Vermögens (§ 21 Nummer 3)";
}

and the claim requires, among other premises, that it does not hold:

rule Wohngeldanspruch(h: Haushalt, p: Person, w: Money) strict {
    when wohngeldberechtigt(h, p) and wohngeld_monatlich(h, w) and w >= 10 EUR
        and kein_ausschluss_nach_20(h)
        and not missbraeuchliche_inanspruchnahme(h);
    then wohngeldanspruch(h, w);
}

One of the other premises, kein_ausschluss_nach_20, is § 20 Abs. 2: no claim exists if every member of the household is eligible in principle for one of the kinds of training support it lists, such as BAföG, unless that support is granted only as a loan. The Vogts’ case records, as a declared fact (bafoeg, origin case_input), that not all of them are.

The amount (§ 19) and the claim (§§ 19–21) are two different conclusions. The ministry’s own brochure says the same: its examples show the amount by the formula and expressly “begründen keinen Rechtsanspruch” — establish no legal claim.

4. The answers

The case FamilieOhneWuerdigung is the Vogts on 1 January 2025 with every fact of Familie2025 — except the authority’s assessment under § 21 Nr. 3.

That answers the prediction: something else. The amount is known; the claim waits. Technically the answer has two parts: the claim is not established (truth status NEITHER), and the evaluation is waiting for an authority (evaluation status REQUIRES_JUDGMENT), with a request:

{
  "authority": "urn:de:social:clir:wohngeld#Wohngeldbehoerde",
  "predicate": "urn:de:social:clir:wohngeld#missbraeuchliche_inanspruchnahme",
  "request": {
    "relation": "urn:de:social:clir:wohngeld#missbraeuchliche_inanspruchnahme",
    "polarity": "negative",
    "args": [{ "kind": "entity_ref", "id": "urn:de:example:wohngeld:familie-weimar:haushalt" }]
  }
}

It names who must answer (the Wohngeldbehörde), what (whether claiming would be abusive, for this household), and which answer the claim needs (negative — that it would not be).

5. The authority answers

In Familie2025 the office has answered. The case records its assessment with a different origin from the household’s own data:

assert "behoerde-21-nr3": not de.social.wohngeld::missbraeuchliche_inanspruchnahme(…haushalt…) { origin adjudicated; }

adjudicated — decided by the competent authority — not case_input. The proof shows which of the two the claim rests on.

The suite of exclusions and judgments runs all three states on a second household (a single person in Weimar, wages €18,000 a year, rent €500, on 1 March 2025):

The amount never moves. Only the authority’s answer moves the claim.

6. Why this matters

For the household. A missing assessment is not a suspicion. The model does not treat silence as “abusive”, and it does not treat silence as “not abusive” either. It says the office has not decided yet.

For the office. Wohngeld is social law, decided under the SGB X: § 31a SGB X allows a decision to be issued fully automatically only where there is no reason to have an official handle the individual case. The general rule of administrative procedure, § 35a VwVfG, which excludes discretion and margins of appreciation from full automation, is named here only for comparison. A request for judgment marks, in the answer itself, the point where this model stops automating and leaves the question to a person of the authority. This is the model’s choice, not a legal qualification: whether a given word of the Act gives the office a margin of appreciation is a question for lawyers and courts. The model makes the point visible; it does not decide it.

For the system. A calculated amount does not establish entitlement by itself. A calculator that silently assumes “not abusive” presents a claim where the authority has not yet spoken.

7. A second place the Act asks for judgment

§ 5 Abs. 1 S. 2 Nr. 3 counts as a household member someone who lives with a member so that “nach verständiger Würdigung” a mutual will to take responsibility for each other must be assumed. The model holds this the same way: when the facts do not settle it, the answer asks the Wohngeldbehörde. § 5 Abs. 2 adds a presumption — for example, living together for more than a year — which the model applies as a rebuttable rule. The scenarios run all three paths: no presumption and no assessment (judgment requested), the office affirms the community (two members), the presumption applies and is not rebutted (member without a separate assessment).

8. Where Catala stands on this

Catala’s exceptions and defaults let a programme state a general rule and its exceptions beside the text — a strong foundation for conditions like § 21. In Catala 1.3.0, a value such as “abusive” is an input supplied by the caller; there is no built-in form for a pending decision or its addressee. Arxo builds the request into the answer: the amount is computed, the claim is held, and the authority is named.

9. Run it

law ask <case package> --case FamilieOhneWuerdigung --query-json queries/wohngeld-485.json
law ask <case package> --case FamilieOhneWuerdigung --query-json queries/anspruch-485.json

The first answer is established; the second has the evaluation status REQUIRES_JUDGMENT and one entry in judgmentRequests. Recorded on 12 October 2026 with law 0.1.12.

Exercise

1. In FamilieOhneWuerdigung, which of the four questions in section 4 would change if the office found the claim abusive, and to what?
2. Why does the model not treat the absence of an assessment as “not abusive”, given that most households are not?
3. A colleague proposes to replace § 21 Nr. 3 by a rule “assets above €60,000 = abusive”. What would the model then claim that the Act does not say?