Index: /home/dnaber/workspace/Lucene/contrib/spellchecker/src/java/org/apache/lucene/search/spell/SpellChecker.java
===================================================================
--- /home/dnaber/workspace/Lucene/contrib/spellchecker/src/java/org/apache/lucene/search/spell/SpellChecker.java	(revision 598376)
+++ /home/dnaber/workspace/Lucene/contrib/spellchecker/src/java/org/apache/lucene/search/spell/SpellChecker.java	(working copy)
@@ -153,7 +153,7 @@
    * @param ir the indexReader of the user index (can be null see field param)
    * @param field the field of the user index: if field is not null, the suggested
    * words are restricted to the words present in this field.
-   * @param morePopular return only the suggest words that are more frequent than the searched word
+   * @param morePopular return only the suggest words that are as frequent or more frequent than the searched word
    * (only if restricted mode = (indexReader!=null and field!=null)
    * @throws IOException
    * @return String[] the sorted list of the suggest words with these 2 criteria:
@@ -167,9 +167,10 @@
     final TRStringDistance sd = new TRStringDistance(word);
     final int lengthWord = word.length();
 
-    final int goalFreq = (morePopular && ir != null) ? ir.docFreq(new Term(field, word)) : 0;
+    final int freq = (ir != null && field != null) ? ir.docFreq(new Term(field, word)) : 0;
+    final int goalFreq = (morePopular && ir != null && field != null) ? freq : 0;
     // if the word exists in the real index and we don't care for word frequency, return the word itself
-    if (!morePopular && goalFreq > 0) {
+    if (!morePopular && freq > 0) {
       return new String[] { word };
     }