There's a lot going on here, so please bear with me.
I have been with my long term partner for 15 years. She is a dual German citizen that was born in America. She has been living in Germany for 2 years now, and is about to begin an Ausbildung in September. I had planned on joining her in August but she has tremendous reservation about it. When her Ausbildung begins, her pay will be cut. Right now she's not on welfare. She will need to be when the pay cut happens.
1: she is afraid that if we get married around the same time she applies for burgergeld, she will get denied burgergeld.
2: she is afraid that being on burgergeld means we cant do a family reunification residence permit
3: she insists that i can get a job offer prior to arriving in germany and that is strong enough for me to have a worker's residence permit even though I told her chancenkarte/other options only apply for skilled workers (I have a GED, no vocational training, no university learning, and I have only ever worked a cash register my entire life. I am 36 years old.)
I have been absolutely driving myself crazy, translating .pdf files of German law, checking .de websites, asking ChatGPT for context, and it has gotten to a point that we are arguing so badly about it that we are upsetting each other. I even emailed the Auslanderbehorde explaining that I am an 'unqualified/unskilled worker with minimal savings' to ask if marriage was the only option we had, or if there was another path for someone like me.
She also thinks that me emailing the Auslanderbehorde asking that question was a 'bad idea' because it will 'look strange if we get married after she applies for assistance.' I tried to explain to her that the Auslanderbehorde doesn't communicate with the job center and build 'risk profiles' in the way she is acting like they do.
Can we please get some clarity here? I'd be tearing my hair out if I wasn't already bald.