Experts usually perceive the use of family members as interpreters as bad practice. However, bilingual second generation migrants act as interpreters for their families and friends. This mismatch between the scientific criticism against the involvement of family members as interpreters on one hand, and the perspectives of the families and the institutional beneficiaries on the other, may be caused by the fact that German medical institutions are usually not prepared to provide services to a linguistically and culturally diverse clientele. The lack of interpreting services force non-proficient patients to (ab)use bilingual family members. Furthermore, such family interpreters, feature certain advantages compared to interpreters from outside the family. Our study is based on transcriptions of interpreter-mediated interactions in hospitals and sociodemografic data from the German socio-economic panel (SOEP).