The woman died in 2017 fighting to be declared alive

PARIS – Frenchwoman Jeanne Pouchain has an unusual problem. She’s officially dead. He’s been trying for three years to prove he’s alive.

The 58-year-old woman says she lives in constant fear, not daring to leave her home in the village of Saint Joseph, in the Loire region. Authorities confiscated his car for an unpaid debt that he disputes and is at the center of his troubles. He fears it will be the family’s next furniture.

Pouchain’s status prevented her and her husband, who is her legal beneficiary, and her son from using their joint bank account. Being declared dead lacked other critical facilities.

“I don’t exist anymore,” Pouchain said by telephone. “I don’t do anything … I sit on the porch and write.” She called the situation “macabre.”

Pouchain’s death status is the result of a 2017 Lyon ruling that found her dead, even though no death certificate was produced. The decision came at the end of a legal dispute with an employee of Pouchain’s former cleaning company, who was seeking compensation after he lost his job 20 years ago.

But the initial complaint in the court of the French workers Prudhomme failed, falling on Pouchain, whose lawyer claims that her company has no responsibility for dismissal. A series of court proceedings, decisions and appeals followed, up to the Court of Cassation, the highest court in France, which rejected the case outside its domain, Pouchain and her lawyer, Sylvain Cormier, said.

According to Pouchain and her lawyer, the crowded judicial errors ended with the 2017 decision of the Lyon Court of Appeal according to which Pouchain is not among the living. Imbroglio is completely foreign because, Pouchain claimed, neither she nor her relatives received a subpoena.

Pouchain’s husband and son were left with an order to pay the former employee 14,000 euros ($ 17,000).

Cormier, her lawyer, made an unusual move on Monday to invalidate the 2017 decision of the Lyon court of appeal due to a “serious error” of the judges. He said he had never faced such a “crazy” case.

“At first, it was hard for me to believe my client,” he said.

Pouchain says he cannot forgive his former employee for the difficult situation, but he will not identify the woman. The former employee’s lawyer did not respond to several requests for comment.

Cormier points the finger at the judges and “their extreme reluctance to fix their mistake.”

“When an error is so great, it’s hard to recognize,” he said.

Pouchain remains stubbornly hoping that her lawyer’s offer to overturn the ruling will be successful.

“It’s my last chance to get my life back,” she said.