Labor Officials Get Lesson in Modern Love

Germany may be notorious for its tangled bureaucracy. But when German bureaucrats start making up their minds about the marital status of a person, it begins to get a bit unreal.

That's exactly what a women who had applied for unemployment benefits in Düsseldorf experienced when she let two field officers from the German labor department into her apartment.

Under German labor law, officials have the right to check an applicant's eligibility, if need be, by a personal visit to his or her home.

Upon viewing a double bed and a few male cosmetics in the woman's bathroom, the officers jumped to the conclusion that the applicant lived in a common-law marriage with a man, meaning they'd have to consider his income, too, before they could sanction unemployment handouts.

The surprised woman then turned to a social court in the city and complained that, despite the bed and men's toiletries, she and her partner had their own separate apartments.

The judges agreed and ruled that a double bed didn't necessarily amount to a common-law marriage.

Germany's labor officials may just have to shed some of their old-fashioned ideas of love in future.