diff --git a/src/main/java/org/apache/commons/math/exception/MathUserException.java b/src/main/java/org/apache/commons/math/exception/MathUserException.java
new file mode 100644
index 000000000..44e7c8066
--- /dev/null
+++ b/src/main/java/org/apache/commons/math/exception/MathUserException.java
@@ -0,0 +1,56 @@
+/*
+ * Licensed to the Apache Software Foundation (ASF) under one or more
+ * contributor license agreements.  See the NOTICE file distributed with
+ * this work for additional information regarding copyright ownership.
+ * The ASF licenses this file to You under the Apache License, Version 2.0
+ * (the "License"); you may not use this file except in compliance with
+ * the License.  You may obtain a copy of the License at
+ *
+ *      http://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0
+ *
+ * Unless required by applicable law or agreed to in writing, software
+ * distributed under the License is distributed on an "AS IS" BASIS,
+ * WITHOUT WARRANTIES OR CONDITIONS OF ANY KIND, either express or implied.
+ * See the License for the specific language governing permissions and
+ * limitations under the License.
+ */
+package org.apache.commons.math.exception;
+
+/**
+ * This class is intended as a sort of communication channel between
+ * layers of <em>user</em> code separated from each other by calls to
+ * the Commons-Math library.
+ * The Commons-Math code will never catch such an exception.
+ *
+ * @since 2.2
+ * @version $Revision$ $Date$
+ */
+public class MathUserException extends RuntimeException {
+    /**
+     * Default constructor.
+     */
+    public MathUserException() {}
+
+    /**
+     * @param msg Error message.
+     */
+    public MathUserException(String msg) {
+        super(msg);
+    }
+
+    /**
+     * @param msg Error message.
+     * @param cause Cause of the error.
+     */
+    public MathUserException(String msg,
+                             Throwable cause) {
+        super(msg, cause);
+    }
+
+    /**
+     * @param cause Cause of the error.
+     */
+    public MathUserException(Throwable cause) {
+        super(cause);
+    }
+}