When I try to get the value of a date property of a Word document (with property.getValue()). It returns me sometimes a wrong date. In fact, trying many calendar days in row, it will get me the good dates 3 days in a row then a wrong date the 3 following days then again 3 good dates and so on. For example 08/06/2000, 09/06/2000 and 10/06/2000 setted in a custom property will return me the good values but 11/06/2000, 12/06/2000 and 13/06/2000 will get me a wrong value (something like : Mon Jan 01 00:57:58 CET 1601). I observed that wrong date always state a 'CET' and good ones a 'CEST'. You also had the same problem : look in the "HPSF How-to", 1.3.7 Sample Output : the property ID 12 in the SummaryInformation (supposed to be the creation date) indicates : Mon Jan 01 00:59:25 CET 1601 !!! But the date just following (ID 13 : last save) seems right (Thu Jul 18 16:22:00 CEST 2002).
This has been corrected some time ago. Please get the latest development build (see http://jakarta.apache.org/builds/jakarta-poi/dev/) and check if this fixes your problem.