In short and in plain language
This post is about your website when a care service gets a new owner. The handover has a fixed day.
The website does not notice it. It still shows the old imprint. The form still sends mail to an old inbox.
The domain, mailbox and logins belong in the purchase contract. The post explains when the imprint and privacy page change. It also explains what the old name means.
Old page addresses lead on to the new site. Your careers page tells your team what comes next.
We plan the change with you.
A takeover has a date. The purchase agreement names the cut-off day on which the business passes to the buyer, and from that day a different name appears on every invoice, every care contract and every duty roster. The website notices none of it. It still shows the seller's imprint, the previous provider's privacy policy, a contact form that delivers into a mailbox the buyer cannot open, and a careers page that says nothing at all to an anxious team. That gap is the whole difference between an orderly handover and two weeks in which nobody knows who to call. The deadlines are not a matter of preference: Section 613a of the German Civil Code governs what happens to employment relationships, Section 25 subsection 1 and Section 26 subsection 1 of the Commercial Code govern the trade name and the liability attached to it, and Section 72 subsection 1 of Book XI of the Social Code governs who may bill the long-term care insurance funds at all. Those provisions set the project's dates. This article puts the website work onto them: which line belongs in the purchase agreement, which address gets a redirect, when the imprint and the provider statement change, and what the careers page says on announcement day.
Key takeaways
- Domain, mailboxes and access credentials are either named in the purchase agreement or they are nowhere. The transfer of undertaking moves employment relationships by operation of law (Section 613a subsection 1 sentence 1 BGB), but no domain, no hosting contract and no editorial account.
- The name decides the liability. Anyone continuing the business under the existing trade name is liable for the former owner's obligations (Section 25 subsection 1 HGB); the former owner's residual liability ends after five years (Section 26 subsection 1 HGB).
- The supply contract belongs to the provider. Care insurance funds may only provide care through approved facilities (Section 72 subsection 1 SGB XI), and the contract is concluded with the provider of the care facility (Section 72 subsection 2 SGB XI) - not with an address and not with a website.
- The imprint and the privacy policy change on the cut-off day, not afterwards. The Digital Services Act requires the provider's name and address (Section 5 subsection 1 DDG), and the General Data Protection Regulation requires the controller's identity and contact details (Art. 13 subsection 1 GDPR).
- After being informed, employees have one month (Section 613a subsection 6 BGB) to object, and the transferred terms may not be changed to their detriment for one year (Section 613a subsection 1 sentence 2 BGB). Inside that window, the team reads the careers page.
- Old addresses get redirected, not switched off. Every service page that has sat in search results and hospital discharge letters for years needs a destination on the new site. How a care website is structured for that is covered in structure and page layout.
Two sites, two providers, one cut-off day
In legal terms a takeover is not a move; it is a change of owner. Section 613a subsection 1 sentence 1 BGB provides that the new owner steps into the rights and duties arising from existing employment relationships when a business or part of a business passes to them by legal transaction. That happens by operation of law, with no action and no signature from the employees. For almost everything else the opposite applies. The domain belongs to whoever is recorded as its holder at the registry, the mailbox hangs on a contract with a provider, the phone number on a line, the business profile in map search on an account. None of it travels automatically. Sign a purchase agreement without those items and you have bought a business and borrowed a website whose keys somebody else holds. What ownership looks like during normal operations is covered in keeping domain and access under control; during a handover it becomes a contract question.
The second point is the number of web presences. In most takeovers two websites exist on the cut-off day: the seller's, which has been sitting in search results, brochures and referral letters for years, and the buyer's, who is acquiring the service and already runs a site of their own. Both list services, both have a contact form, both answer. If nobody decides which of the two leads from the day after, the search engine decides - address by address. So the question is not whether the old site survives, but which addresses it keeps, which point to the new one and which disappear. It is the same decision as in a relaunch, except the date is set by law rather than chosen.
What does not transfer by itself
What the purchase agreement has to say
A purchase agreement for a care service lists premises, vehicles, contracts and staff. The digital items are often missing, because they carry no book value and nobody thinks of them. They are nevertheless the part whose absence shows up on day one. The six points below are not legal drafting - that belongs with the advising law firm - they name the objects that have to be described before any drafting is possible at all. What works in practice is to carry each item with three details: what it is, who the current counterparty is, and by when the transfer has to be complete. A list without dates turns into a task without a deadline.
- The domain, with the holder exactly as the registry words it. A .de domain is transferable unless it carries a dispute entry (DENIC). The agreement needs the current domain holder as the registry records them, not the name on the letterhead. The two differ more often than either side expects.
- The transfer password and its deadline. The change runs through a password with a limited life: 30 days (DENIC) from deposit or issue, and a single use. Request it four weeks before the cut-off day and then wait, and you will request it twice.
- Mailboxes and the mail inside them. Not only the addresses, the contents too: quotes, applications, objections, records. What is taken over is named; so is what stays with the seller. A silent forward is processing without a defined purpose.
- Access to the editorial system, hosting and database. What gets named is not "the login" but every account with its role. Experience says at least one of them sits with a service provider who does not appear in the purchase agreement at all.
- The business profile in map search. A profile with reviews hangs on an account. Recreate it instead of transferring it and the review history restarts at zero - why that is expensive is covered in our article on reviews as a trust anchor.
- Images, texts and the consent behind them. Photographs of staff and clients are personal data covered by consent given to the old provider. A purchase agreement can transfer usage rights; it does not replace consent. The workable route is to obtain it again before the cut-off day.
The name: keep it or retire it
The most visible decision is the one about the name, and it has a liability dimension that is rarely considered alongside it. Section 25 subsection 1 HGB provides that anyone who continues a commercial business acquired inter vivos under the existing trade name is liable for all obligations of the former owner arising in that business. The former owner does not vanish from responsibility at once, but their liability is time-limited: they are liable for those obligations only if they fall due within five years (Section 26 subsection 1 HGB) and claims are established in a specified manner. For the website this means the name in the page header is not a design question to be corrected later. It is decided together with legal counsel, before the first page is touched.
Three side conditions come with it. The trade name cannot be sold on its own, because under Section 23 HGB it may not be transferred without the commercial business for which it is used. The change of owner must be filed for entry in the commercial register (Section 31 subsection 1 HGB). And a registered trade mark follows the same logic: if it belongs to the business operation, it is in case of doubt covered by the transfer of that operation (Section 27 subsection 2 MarkenG). Keeping the old name therefore means keeping more than a word - and retiring it means retiring it everywhere at once: page header, imprint, forms, invoice templates, signatures, job adverts.
Name stays: recognition stays
Relatives, hospitals and social services find the same wording as in the discharge letter. The site then needs no name change, but it does need a visible note about the new provider in the imprint and on the page about the company.
Name stays: liability follows
Continuing the trade name draws the liability for legacy obligations with it. Whether a deviating exclusion of liability is registered and published is for counsel to decide - the website only reflects what was decided.
Name changes: a single day
A name change does not happen in stages. Page header, imprint, form senders, signatures and job adverts change on the same day, or three pages say three different things and nobody knows which one applies.
Name changes: addresses stay
Every old address gets a destination. Without redirects you do not lose the name, you lose the position in search results - and with it the enquiries that arrived that way for years.
Two sites: one leads
If the buyer already runs a site, one of the two becomes the leading one. The second becomes a redirect layer, not a second site carrying the same copy in a different order.
Either way: one transition page
A single page explains the change in five sentences: what changes, what stays, from when, for whom, and who to speak to. It is linked from the page header and dismantled after three months.
Imprint, provider, privacy: the switch on cut-off day
Three blocks of text on the website say who is responsible, and all three have to name the same provider on the cut-off day. The Digital Services Act requires a service provider to state, among other things, their name and the address at which they are established, and for legal persons additionally the legal form and the authorised representatives (Section 5 subsection 1 DDG). The privacy policy must give the identity and the contact details of the controller and, where applicable, of the controller's representative (Art. 13 subsection 1 GDPR). And the provider statement on the service pages is no courtesy line: the care insurance funds may only provide outpatient and inpatient care through facilities with which a supply contract exists (Section 72 subsection 1 SGB XI), and that contract is concluded with the provider of the care facility (Section 72 subsection 2 SGB XI). If the old provider is still named there, the page describes an approval the operator no longer holds in that form.
- Imprint. New name, new address, legal form, authorised representatives, register court and register number, supervisory authority where one exists. The mandatory details and their pitfalls are broken down one by one in our article on the legally sound imprint.
- Privacy policy. Controller, contact details, data protection officer. Checked alongside: where the forms deliver. A contact form that still runs into the seller's mailbox transmits health data to a third party.
- Record of processing activities. It begins with the name and contact details of the controller (Art. 30 subsection 1 GDPR). At a change of provider it is not amended, it is switched over to the new controller.
- Provider statement on the service pages. Anyone presenting long-term care insurance benefits names the approved provider. That includes price notices and the pages explaining the supply contract.
- Form destinations and consent texts. Every form gets a new recipient and a new notice text - contact, care enquiry, application and callback alike. What to watch for is set out in forms and data protection.
- Keep accessibility in view. The German Accessibility Strengthening Act applies to services provided to consumers after 28 June 2025 (Section 1 subsection 3 BFSG). Micro-enterprises employing fewer than ten people (Section 2 BFSG) with at most two million euros in annual turnover or balance sheet total are exempt for services; a takeover can push a business past that threshold.
Keeping addresses: redirects, not a fresh start
A website that has run for ten years has more addresses than its operator believes: service pages, blog articles, job adverts, a PDF with the model contract, a page per district. Those addresses sit in search results, in the directories of care support centres, in hospital discharge letters, in links from self-help groups and in the bookmarks of relatives. Switch them off and you lose more than rankings; you lose every path built up over years. 86 % (Federal Statistical Office) of the almost 5.7 million (Federal Statistical Office) people in need of long-term care in Germany were cared for at home in December 2023; for their relatives every single subpage is a possible entry point, not just the home page. The remedy is unspectacular and gets forgotten anyway: a complete list of all old addresses and, for each one, a destination on the new site.
- The list is built before the cut-off day. Every address on the old site with its traffic for the past twelve months, merged from the address index, the server log and the search console account. Service pages such as the one on consumable care aids often rank above the home page.
- One destination per address, not a catch-all. Every old service page points at the new page that matches it in substance. A blanket redirect to the home page devalues the link and sends visitors searching who had already found what they wanted.
- A permanent redirect, not a temporary detour. The redirect stays until the old address has disappeared from directories and letter templates - in practice at least a year, often longer.
- The old domain stays paid for. It is renewed, not cancelled. A released domain can be registered by somebody else, and then a discharge letter from two years ago points at a stranger's site.
- Move the form destinations too. A redirected page with a form that still sends to the old mailbox looks correct and does not work. Every redirect is closed out with one test submission, not merely eyeballed in a browser.
- Update the local listings. Company name, address and phone number in directories and portals change at the same time; how those details interact is covered in our article on local findability.
The project plan with dates
So far this is all a list. It becomes a plan once every item hangs on a date, and in a transfer of undertaking those dates are not freely chosen. Employees must be informed in text form before the transfer, and the information must state the timing, the reason, the consequences and the measures envisaged (Section 613a subsection 5 BGB). From receipt of that information, one month (Section 613a subsection 6 BGB) runs in which each individual may object to the transfer in writing. A dismissal because of the transfer is invalid (Section 613a subsection 4 BGB). Those three sentences set the dates everything else groups around - and they explain why nothing may go public before the workforce has been informed.
| Point in time | Legal anchor | What happens on the website | Who decides |
|---|---|---|---|
| Signing of the agreement | Purchase agreement with an item list | Domain, mailboxes and logins are named; address list and log access are requested | Buyer and seller |
| Four weeks before cut-off | Transfer password, valid 30 days (DENIC) | Request the password, hand over hosting and editorial access, set up a staging system with the new legal texts | Buyer with service provider |
| Informing the team | Section 613a subsection 5 BGB, text form before the transfer | Nothing public; drafts for the careers page and the transition page sit ready | Seller and buyer together |
| Announcement day | Objection period of one month (Section 613a subsection 6 BGB) | Transition page live, note in the page header, careers page revised, live job adverts updated | Buyer |
| Cut-off day | Section 5 subsection 1 DDG, Art. 13 subsection 1 GDPR, Section 72 subsection 2 SGB XI | Imprint, privacy policy, provider statement and every form destination change together | Buyer |
| Cut-off day plus four weeks | Residual liability of five years (Section 26 subsection 1 HGB) | Redirects measured, error pages counted, directory entries updated, mailboxes checked | Buyer with service provider |
Two dates in that table are routinely underestimated. The first is announcement day: it is not the cut-off day, it comes before it, and on exactly that day relatives, applicants and referrers start asking. Write nothing until the cut-off day and you have left the most question-heavy day of the whole project without an answer. The second is the month after the cut-off day: redirects only count as correct once they have been called and counted at least once, and the number of error pages does not fall on its own. How a changeover like this is supported technically is described on our page about the website relaunch; the ongoing part afterwards belongs in maintenance, and what comes up there routinely is set out in website maintenance for care services.
The careers page on announcement day
On announcement day the acquired team reads its own careers page. Not out of curiosity, but because it shows how the new provider talks about work - and because the same window contains the one month (Section 613a subsection 6 BGB) in which anyone may object to the transfer. An objection is risky in employment terms, but it happens, and it happens more often when nobody says anything. The careers page replaces neither a staff meeting nor the information in text form. It answers the questions that remain open after the meeting, and it answers them in writing so they can be read again at home. With 15,549 (Federal Statistical Office) outpatient care services and 16,505 (Federal Statistical Office) care homes in Germany, the alternative is never far away for an experienced nurse.
- What stays the same comes first. Duty roster, rounds, team, location, contacts. Transferred terms from a collective agreement or works agreement may not be changed to the employee's detriment for one year (Section 613a subsection 1 sentence 2 BGB), and that sentence belongs on the page in plain language.
- Who the new provider is. Name, legal form, registered office, how many facilities, since when. Not a declaration of intent, but details somebody can verify before passing them on.
- Who the contact is, and from when. With a name and a direct line. A takeover without a named person produces exactly the rumours it is meant to prevent.
- What changes, and from when. Including the uncomfortable parts. A page that promises nothing but good news loses credibility at the first contradicting detail - and the team usually knows that detail before management does.
- Voices from the team only once they exist. Before the cut-off day there are none, and invented quotes do more damage than an empty slot. How real voices come about is covered in employee voices on the careers page.
- Keep live job adverts running. Adverts are not deleted, they are rewritten to the new provider; otherwise somebody applies to an employer that no longer exists in that form. What an advert has to achieve is set out in job adverts that bring applications.
Three sentences that are usually missing on announcement day
After the cut-off day: measure instead of hoping
A handover counts as finished when it has been measured, not when it has been celebrated. Four weeks after the cut-off day, four questions can be answered, and all four have a number as their answer. How many of the old addresses return an error page? How many enquiries arrive through the new form, compared with the month before? How many of the search terms that used to find the old site now lead to the new one? And how many directory entries still name the old provider? The answers do not live in anybody's gut feeling, they live in the reports that were already running - provided access to them was part of the handover and stood in the same line of the purchase agreement as the domain.
- Count error pages, do not estimate them. The list of old addresses is called once in full. Every address without a redirect is a finding with a name, not a percentage.
- Compare enquiries. A drop in the first month is expected; a drop in the third is not. Which metrics are worth watching is set out in metrics that actually say something; when demand exceeds capacity, the waiting list instead of the refusal helps.
- Work through the directories. Every entry with the old name is wrong information given to relatives. The list gets worked through, not sampled.
- Have the legal texts read by someone else. Imprint, privacy policy and provider statement are read once after the cut-off day by somebody who did not write them. Two independent readings find what one reading misses.
- Check the mailboxes. For four weeks, check whether mail still arrives at the old addresses. An application nobody reads costs more than any redirect.
- Dismantle the transition page. After three months the note disappears from the page header. A notice about a change that happened a year ago creates doubt rather than clarity.
The difference between an orderly takeover and one that drags on for months rarely lies in the purchase price. It lies in whether the website was treated as part of the business or as something to be sorted out afterwards. The deadlines in Section 613a BGB and Section 26 subsection 1 HGB are fixed regardless; put the digital steps on the same timeline and you have, on the cut-off day, a site that says what the invoice says, and a team that does not have to go looking for the answer. If a takeover is ahead of you, talk to us - we will go through the item list with you while the agreement can still be changed.
Sources and statutes
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