World News for Students of English

09-09-2021 07:00

Declared dead by a French court in 2017, 59-year-old Jeanne Pouchain has spent the past four years trying to escape a legal maze of court errors and to prove to authorities that she is in fact alive.

The experience’s been devastating, and it left Pouchain and her family with seemingly endless problems. It all began when her family received a letter from a French court claiming that she was deceased. It demanded her husband and son pay her debts as a part of a legal procedure launched by a former employee of Pouchain’s cleaning business.

Since that time, Pouchain hasn’t been able to work, and she is afraid to leave her house because she has no valid ID or social security details. Without a social security card, she’s been missing out on health and dental care, and she only has six teeth left.

Some of Pouchain and her husband’s belongings have been taken by the court, and all their savings have gone into the cost of fighting against the court’s ruling. However, there is hope that the court will look at Pouchain’s case again.

Difficult words: maze (a network of paths through which a person has to find a way), deceased (dead), miss out (to lose an opportunity to do or have something).

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