The invention relates to a parking assistance apparatus (12) for a motor vehicle (10). The invention is based on the object of providing reliably working parking assistance that can involve computational-intensive processing of sensor signals. To this end, at least one sensor (20) for producing a sensor signal (S) that is dependent on a relative position (D) of a vehicle-external object (22) is connected to a first controller (14) that is designed to take each sensor signal (S) as a basis for producing position data (P) that describe the relative position (D) and to transmit said position data via a communication link (18) of the motor vehicle (10). A second controller (16) is designed to receive the position data (P) via the communication link (18) and, during a parking manoeuvre of the motor vehicle (10), to take the position data (P) as a basis for outputting a control signal (C) to an actuator device (26) of the motor vehicle (10).