Series: Your card, your documents

The office claims it sent the summons. No letter arrived, and there is no envelope in the file either

Published: 3 August 2026 · Author: Dariusz Włodarczyk Kancelaria TRC · Reading time: approx. 7 min

This is one of the most unfair situations in residence cases. You get a text message saying the office has issued a summons. You wait for the postman. Nothing arrives. Six months later you find out that the deadline has passed and the case has taken a bad turn — because the office records contain a note saying "sent". The key question is whether there is anything in the file that actually confirms the dispatch. If there is neither a return receipt nor a returned envelope, the situation looks completely different from what the official note suggests.

Where this topic comes from. In August 2026, "Gazeta Wyborcza" described the case of a nurse from Turkey working in Warsaw. She filed her temporary residence application on 15 February 2024, two days before her visa expired. On 2 August 2024 she received a text message about a summons to remedy formal deficiencies. According to the newspaper's account, the letter never reached her, and the office file contains no envelope confirming the dispatch either. We describe the legal mechanism here; we do not assess that particular case — we know its course solely from the press report.
Table of contents
  1. When a letter from the office is actually served
  2. Delivery notice and deemed service — how it works
  3. Who has to prove service
  4. Why an unserved summons can freeze a case for years
  5. What to do, step by step
  6. The scale of the problem: what NIK and the Ombudsman found
  7. Frequently asked questions (FAQ)
  8. Legal basis and sources

1. When a letter from the office is actually served

Procedural time limits in your case run from effective service of the letter, not from the day an official printed it out or clicked "send". That distinction decides everything.

If you have appointed a representative, letters go to them (Article 40 § 2 of the Code of Administrative Procedure) and such service is effective against you — even if the representative passed nothing on to you. We write about this separately in our article on a summons that went to the employer.

A text message is not service. A message saying "a summons has been issued and will be sent by post" only informs you about a technical step inside the office. It does not start the time limit and does not replace the letter. But it is valuable evidence — it shows the date from which you knew the letter existed, and that you did not ignore it.

2. Delivery notice and deemed service — how it works

When the postman does not find the addressee, substituted service under Article 44 of the Code of Administrative Procedure comes into play. The postal operator keeps the item for 14 days, leaving a notice of the possibility of collection and, after 7 days, a second notice. If the item is not collected, the letter is deemed served on the last day of that period — even though it never physically reached your hands. Hence the name: deemed service.

This construction, however, works only if all of its conditions have been met: the item was sent to the correct address, the notices were actually left and documented, and the periods were observed. A failure in any of these elements means there is no presumption.

3. Who has to prove service

This is the heart of the matter. It is the authority that derives a legal effect from service, so it is the authority that must prove it. It is not for you to prove that the letter did not arrive — the office has to show evidence in the file that it did arrive, or that deemed service operated correctly.

The file should contain one of two things:

If there is neither one nor the other, and all there is is an internal system note saying "sent", that is not proof of service. In such a situation there is no way to assume that the time limit for remedying deficiencies ever started to run — and if it never started, it could not have expired.

That is why the envelope is sometimes more important than the letter itself. A returned envelope with the annotations is often the only document that decides whether the case goes on or has been closed without examination.

4. Why an unserved summons can freeze a case for years

In residence cases three separate time limits meet, and it is worth telling them apart:

1
Formal deficiencies in the application — Article 64 § 2 of the Code of Administrative Procedure. A summons with a time limit of not less than 7 days, on pain of the application being left without examination.
2
Documents supporting the application — Article 106(2a) of the Act on Foreigners. An evidentiary summons where the time limit may not be shorter than 14 days, and the voivode is to assess the time actually needed to obtain the document.
3
The time limit for a decision — Article 112a(2) of the Act on Foreigners. Sixty days start running only from the last of these events: appearing in person, remedying formal deficiencies and submitting the documents.

The consequence is counter-intuitive and painful: if the summons does not reach you, the case can sit for years while, formally, the time limit for dealing with it has not even started. So the office is not in default within the meaning of the regulations, even though from your perspective nothing is happening.

On top of that comes a barrier few people know about: Articles 100c and 100d of the Act of 12 March 2022 on assistance to Ukrainian citizens suspended the running of time limits and excluded complaints about inaction and excessive length in residence cases handled by voivodes — with regard to all foreigners, not only Ukrainian citizens. By its order of 2 April 2025 the Provincial Administrative Court in Gliwice referred questions on this matter to the Court of Justice of the EU for a preliminary ruling (case C-254/25), and the Ministry of the Interior and Administration announced that it is waiting for that ruling.

5. What to do, step by step

1
Secure the text message and the case status. Take a screenshot showing the date and print out the case status from the system. This is proof that you learned about the letter from the system, not from the post.
2
Do not wait for the postman — ask for a copy. After such a text message, write to the office asking it to send you a copy of the summons and to state the date and method of its dispatch. That step alone can later serve as proof of your diligence.
3
Use your right to inspect the file (Article 73 of the Code of Administrative Procedure). Check whether the file contains a return receipt or a returned envelope with annotations about the delivery notices. You may take notes and copies and request certified copies.
4
Check the address the letter was sent to. A frequent cause: the application was filed from a temporary address (accommodation provided by the employer, a room rented for a few months) and, after moving out, nobody reported the change in writing. A letter sent to the old address may be treated as served.
5
Report your current address for service in writing. With every move, to the file of the specific case, quoting the case number. An e-mail to an official is not enough.
6
Match the remedy to the situation. You react differently when a case has been left without examination and differently when a refusal decision has been issued. Details in our article application left without examination — how to save the case.
Beware of the time-limit trap. Leaving an application without examination is not a decision and no appeal lies against it — review takes place by way of a complaint about inaction. A refusal decision, by contrast, may be appealed to the Head of the Office for Foreigners within 14 days, through the voivode. Confusing these two paths costs you the case.

6. The scale of the problem: what NIK and the Ombudsman found

These are not isolated incidents. The Supreme Audit Office (NIK), examining five voivodeship offices in 2021–2023, assessed the handling of foreigners' cases negatively: 60 per cent of cases were conducted in breach of the regulations, and the longest processing time revealed for a single application was 2,700 days. NIK also recorded demands for documents the office already held, a lack of instruction about rights and obligations, and the setting of the date of initiation of proceedings contrary to Article 61 § 3 of the Code of Administrative Procedure — only once deficiencies had been remedied, a practice the administrative courts regard as improper.

The Commissioner for Human Rights is pursuing general submissions on this matter (ref. XI.541.31.2021) and points to delays that have persisted for years. The scale of the workload explains part of the problem: according to figures cited by the Ombudsman, in 2023 the Mazovian voivode received over 147,000 residence applications, about a quarter of all applications in the country, and in 2024 — about 106,000.

For you, one practical conclusion follows: since the system can be unreliable, document every step on your side. Screenshots, dates, proofs of posting and letters added to the file are what later allows you to show that it was not you who neglected the case.

Frequently asked questions (FAQ)

Who has to prove that the summons reached me?

The authority handling the case. It is the office that derives a legal effect from service and it is the office that gathers the evidence: a return receipt or a returned envelope with annotations about the two delivery notices. If neither document is in the file, there is no basis for assuming that the letter was served.

Does a text message from the office replace service of a letter?

No. A text message about a letter being issued is merely information about a technical step. Procedural time limits are counted from effective service of the letter under the Code of Administrative Procedure, not from the date of a message on your phone.

Can I see the file of my residence case?

Yes. The right to inspect the file, take notes and copies, and request certified copies follows from Article 73 of the Code of Administrative Procedure and is available to a party at every stage of the proceedings.

What should I do if the office treated a letter as served by delivery notice, but I was not there?

The presumption arising from substituted service can be rebutted. You have to show that the item was not left at the correct address or that the notification duty was not fulfilled. Evidence of staying elsewhere, a tenancy agreement, confirmation of a change of address reported to the office or the postal operator's records all serve this purpose.

The office says it sent it, and you received nothing?

We will check the file of your case and determine whether it contains any proof of service at all. That decides whether the time limit was running — and whether the case can still be saved.

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Legal notice: this article is informational and does not constitute legal advice. The individual case described is cited solely after a press report — we do not know the file of those proceedings and have not verified the parties' claims; the text contains no assessment of the conduct of any particular office or official. Legal status: August 2026. Every case is different — consult a lawyer before taking any decision. Data controller: Dariusz Włodarczyk Kancelaria TRC.

Sources: Articles 40 § 2, 44, 61 § 3, 64 § 2 and 73 of the Code of Administrative Procedure; Articles 106(2a) and 112a(2) of the Act of 12 December 2013 on Foreigners; Articles 100c and 100d of the Act of 12 March 2022 on assistance to Ukrainian citizens in connection with the armed conflict on the territory of that state; submissions of the Commissioner for Human Rights together with the replies of the Ministry of the Interior and Administration, ref. XI.541.31.2021, bip.brpo.gov.pl (which also cites the findings of the NIK audit and the figures on the number of applications); the mos.cudzoziemcy.gov.pl portal ("Leaving without examination"); the individual case as described by "Gazeta Wyborcza Warszawa", warszawa.wyborcza.pl. The above commentary is our own; the provisions cited should be verified against the current text of the statute before taking action. On the date of publication, case C-254/25 before the CJEU remained undecided.