Letter Phobia Fails in Court

A German court located in the western Rhineland-Palatinate state was faced with an interesting appeal case over the past few months. The woman, who has not been identified, was receiving child support payments from her ex, however in May of 2007 she was sent mandatory paperwork that needed to be completed in order to continue receiving payments. She did not complete the paperwork, and her child support was discontinued.

In July, the woman was contacted again and told that her failure to comply had resulted in her discontinued payments and that she had one month to appeal. Two months later in September, she did appeal, but because it was more than one month her appeal was thrown out. This is where things got odd for the German court.

The woman then filed another appeal, stating that she had failed to reply to the letter in May because she had "a phobia of official correspondence." She went on to elaborate on why she had this phobia, stating that she had suffered "financial disadvantages" from unopened letters, and she was now absolutely terrified of them.

In her appeal, she noted that she was planning on seeking psychological help for her phobia, but the court denied her appeal once more. Their reasoning was that her letter phobia was a long term problem, and that if she had wanted to, she could have sought out help on numerous occasions before allowing her time to run out on the paperwork.