A cashier for Romania's state-owned railway has been asked to pay a month's worth of wages to receive government confirmation that she is alive.

Filoftea Popescu discovered when she applied for a passport that the Romania's People Registration Service had mistakenly declared her dead in November 2005, stripping her of all her rights as a citizen.

"I went to the police ... and I found out that I have no rights in the Romanian state because I died in 2005," the 55-year-old Popescu was quoted on Monday by daily Evenimentul Zilei as saying.

"A lawyer told me it costs me 500 lei (to obtain a court order). Why should I pay to prove I am alive?" Popescu said.

The People Registration Service admitted its error and said it fired the staff responsible.

But Popescu's family doctor is still reeling from the shock of seeing her at his office not long after receiving a copy of her death certificate from the state.

"When she came to my clinic, I lost my voice," said Nicolae Toboiu.

I'm trying to think of a hypothetical tax or fine more ridiculous than this ... but I'm coming up short. Even having to pay for the air that you breathe each day isn't as insane as this case. Please tell me that you're pulling our legs with this, Raktus.

you have to do the same thing here in the states.. pay to prove your alive, that is.. there's no actual tax or anything but you have to pay fees for copies of this and that and all in triplicate and things like that... knew someone who was declared dead after an auto accident they didn't die in. At first they tried to straighten it out themselves but after a lot of crap from the government, they had to get a lawyer finally. Ended up costing them somewhere about 5grand to declare themselves alive. Lost her job and legal rights to her children. She had to go to court afterwards and ADOPT her own kids just to have legal rights to them again. Luckily she and her husband weren't divorced or it could have been worse. He could have legally denied her any thing to do with their kids.

Something I find amusing as heck; in most judicial systems (Canadian, American and UK included) a dead person cannot be convicted of a crime... of any crime.

I think that when these people get declared dead and then spend all sorts of time and money jumping through hoops to prove they're alive that they are missing out on an excellent opportunity.

One could literally get a hold of their death certificate, through alternate channels, find the person responsible for declaring them dead and then rob that person blind, rape and murder them, and get away with it (legally, if not morally)... and I find it odd that no one, of the many people who this has happened to, has ever done so because it seems to me that if a dead person could go around robbing, raping and murdering people then it would force that legal system to re-examine their stance to reinstating a persons "alive" status post-haste.

Of course getting caught while "dead" could be risky too being as if someone else decided to wrong that person (the "dead" one) to any extent the worst they, in turn, could be convicted of would be tantamount to molestation of a corpse...

Good times.

Indeed, time to start your career as a bounty hunter. Call me Steve, cause the man I used to be died a long time ago... so the paperwork says.

I can see an interesting television or novel series in this somewhere, Beff. Write it before someone else beats you to it!

Too late! *scribble scribble*