Because of this, people lose court cases themselves - lawyer explained a common mistake 0 19

Latvian lawyer Yuri Sokolovsky drew residents' attention to a problem on his Facebook page that regularly leads to serious consequences. According to him, over the years of practice, he has repeatedly encountered situations where people lost the opportunity to defend their rights simply because they did not read their mail or did not receive official notifications.

As the lawyer notes, many still believe that an unpleasant problem will go away on its own if ignored. However, in practice, the opposite happens.

According to Sokolovsky, the consequences can be quite serious: people miss deadlines for appealing decisions, fail to appear at court hearings, and notifications of debts eventually turn into enforcement documents.

The lawyer also points to a common misconception that a letter must be delivered exclusively to the addressee in person. Many believe that if they refuse to receive correspondence, the process will stop. However, the legislation provides for a different procedure.

"If you refuse to accept a summons or sign for its receipt, it is still considered delivered at the moment of your refusal," he noted.

In other words, a document can be considered received even if a person has not actually read it.

Sokolovsky reminds that a regular letter is considered received on the eighth day after its registration in the institution, a registered letter on the seventh day after being sent to the post, and an email signed with an electronic signature on the second working day after sending. The lawyer specifically points out the official electronic address system e-adrese. If it is activated, all state and court documents will be sent there.

At the same time, a document is considered delivered already on the second working day after sending, regardless of whether the addressee has reviewed it.

The expert emphasizes that state institutions usually send documents to the declared place of residence or to an additional address specified in the declaration. Therefore, a citizen is obliged to ensure the possibility of receiving correspondence at these addresses.

According to Sokolovsky, if a person has moved, they must declare their new place of residence within a month. Otherwise, important documents may continue to arrive at the old address with all the ensuing consequences.

Another important point concerns situations where a person's place of residence is unknown or not declared. In such cases, government authorities may use public notification, for example, through the official publication Latvijas Vēstnesis. After publication, a person is considered notified already on the next working day.

At the same time, the expert acknowledges that the law allows for the possibility of proving that the document was not actually received on time. However, doing so is extremely difficult. According to Sokolovsky, it is not enough to simply state, "I did not see the letter" or "I did not check the mailbox." It is necessary to provide convincing evidence that receiving the correspondence was objectively impossible, for example, in the case of hospitalization.

In conclusion, Sokolovsky recommends regularly checking the mailbox at the declared place of residence, email, and the e-adrese system. As practice shows, ignoring official correspondence rarely alleviates the problem, but very often makes it significantly more serious.