Woman ruled dead in 2017 fights to be declared alive

PARIS

: Frenchwoman Jeanne

Pouchain

has an unusual problem. She’s officially dead. She has been trying for three years to prove that she is alive. The 58-year-old woman says she lives in constant fear, not daring to leave her house in the village of

Saint Joseph

, in the Loire region. Authorities seized her car over an unpaid debt she contests and which is at the center of her troubles.


She fears the family furniture will be next. Pouchain’s status has prevented her and her husband, who is her legal beneficiary along with her son, from using their joint bank account. Being declared

deceased

has deprived her of other critical amenities. Pouchain’s status as deceased is the result of a 2017 Lyon court decision that deemed 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 losing her job 20 years ago. According to Pouchain and her

attorney

, snowballing judicial errors ended with the 2017 ruling by the

Appeals Court

of Lyon that Pouchain was not among the living. The legal imbroglio is all the stranger because, Pouchain contended, neither she nor her relatives got summons for the hearing. Cormier, her attorney, filed an unusual motion last Monday to invalidate the 2017 decision by the Lyon appeals court due to a “grave error” by the judges. He said he has never before dealt with such a “crazy” case.