Wills in Israel: A Legal Guide for Foreign Residents and Cross-Border Families

By Rachel (Rachel) Shachar, Advocate and Notary — an Israeli lawyer specialising in inheritance, wills, estates and guardianship, ranked among the 50 leading practitioners in inheritance, family and divorce law in the Duns100 ranking.

Introduction

An apartment in Jerusalem left to children in Toronto. A savings account in Tel Aviv belonging to a grandmother who died in Manchester. A holiday flat in Netanya bought thirty years ago by a couple from New York, now the subject of a phone call between two adult siblings who have no idea where to begin.

These are not exotic cases. They are the daily reality of a country where a substantial share of privately held real estate belongs to people who do not live in it, and where families are routinely spread across three continents and two or three legal systems. And they share a common feature: the families involved almost always assume that the will drafted at home covers everything, and almost always discover otherwise at the worst possible moment.

This article explains how Israeli law treats wills — who may make one, in what form, what makes one vulnerable to challenge, and how it is enforced after death — with particular attention to the questions that arise when the testator, the heirs, or the assets sit outside Israel. Readers who prefer the Hebrew treatment of the same material will find it in our full guide to wills and inheritance under Israeli law.

Part One: The Default Rules — What Happens Without a Will

Israeli succession is governed by the Succession Law of 1965. Where there is no valid will, the estate is distributed according to a fixed statutory scheme, and it is worth understanding that scheme before deciding whether to depart from it.

The circle of statutory heirs consists of the surviving spouse together with successive “parentelas”: the deceased’s children and their descendants; failing them, the parents and their descendants; failing them, the grandparents and their descendants. A nearer parentela excludes a more remote one entirely.

The spouse’s share is defined separately. In broad terms, the surviving spouse takes the household movables — including the family car — plus one half of the estate where the deceased left children or parents. Where there are no children and no parents, the spouse’s share increases, and in certain circumstances extends to the deceased’s share in the family home. Children divide the remainder equally, with the descendants of a predeceased child stepping into that child’s place.

Two further points complete the picture.

A will does not override every claim. Israeli law preserves a limited right of certain close relatives — a spouse, minor children, and in some circumstances needy parents — to claim maintenance from the estate. This is a narrow qualification on testamentary freedom rather than a forced-heirship regime of the Continental kind, but it can cut into what a will provides.

Not every asset passes through the estate. Life insurance proceeds, provident fund balances and pension entitlements payable on death generally pass to the designated beneficiary and fall outside the estate altogether, unless the governing contract or fund rules provide otherwise. This produces one of the most common and most avoidable planning failures: a meticulously drafted will governing a minority of the family’s wealth, while the majority flows through beneficiary designation forms last updated two decades earlier.

Part Two: Testamentary Freedom and Its Limits

Capacity

Any adult over eighteen who has not been declared legally incompetent may make a will. Capacity also requires that the testator understood the nature of the act. A will made when the testator did not appreciate what he was doing is void.

In practice this is the most heavily litigated ground of all, and it is won or lost on evidence gathered at the time of signing rather than reconstructed years later. A medical opinion dated close to the signing, a contemporaneous attendance note, sometimes a video record — these are what separate a will that survives a challenge from one that does not.

Provisions That Fail

Duress, threat, undue influence, deception or fraud. A provision procured by any of these is void. Undue influence does not require a wrongful act; dependence of the testator on the beneficiary, combined with suspicious circumstances, may suffice.
Participation in the drafting. A provision in favour of a person who drafted the will, witnessed it, or otherwise took part in its making — and equally in favour of that person’s spouse — is void. This rule is absolute and does not depend on proving that anything improper occurred. It is why a beneficiary must never serve as a witness.
Agreements about future inheritance. An agreement made during a person’s lifetime concerning his future estate is void, as is a gift intended to take effect only on death unless made by will. The dispositive rules cannot be contracted around.
Uncertainty and illegality. A will from which it is impossible to determine what was left, or to whom, is void; so is a provision whose performance would be illegal, immoral or impossible.

The Available Structures

Israeli law permits a degree of sophistication: successive gifts (one beneficiary followed by another on the first beneficiary’s death), conditional gifts, and the appointment of an estate administrator. But the toolkit is noticeably thinner than what common-law practitioners are used to. The trust, in particular, does not occupy the central place it holds in American or English estate planning. Clients seeking long-term control, creditor protection or multi-generational structures usually end up combining a will with a trust — a combination whose tax consequences must be examined in advance, in both jurisdictions.

Part Three: The Four Permitted Forms

Israeli law recognises exactly four forms of will. A document that falls outside all four is, in principle, not a will at all — and this is where foreign wills most often run into difficulty.

1. Holographic will. Written entirely in the testator’s own hand, dated in his hand, and signed by him. Simple to make and free of cost, but exposed to allegations of forgery, prone to ambiguity, and typically drafted without any advice on tax or on assets that are not straightforward chattels.

2. Will before witnesses. The most common form. The will is in writing (typing is fine), dated, and signed by the testator in the presence of two witnesses after he declares to them that this is his will; the witnesses then certify by their signatures at that same occasion. The witnesses must be competent adults who take no benefit under the will and are not married to anyone who does. Our Hebrew note on drafting a will before witnesses sets out the clauses that most often decide a later dispute.

3. Will before an authority. Made before a judge, a court registrar, the Registrar of Inheritance Affairs, or a member of a religious court — either orally or by submitting the text in writing. A notary is treated as an “authority” for this purpose, which is the source of the familiar “notarial will.” Its principal advantage is evidential: it is considerably harder to attack. For a testator living abroad this form carries particular significance, because Israeli diplomatic and consular officers are empowered to perform notarial functions — meaning a will can be made before an Israeli consul without travelling to Israel.

4. Oral will. Available only to a person who is dying or who, in circumstances justifying the belief, regards himself as facing death. The words are spoken before two witnesses who understand his language; they record a memorandum and deposit it with the Registrar. The will lapses one month after the circumstances that justified it have passed, if the testator is still alive.

Curing Defects

A court may admit a will despite a defect or omission in its form where it has no doubt as to its authenticity. Since the 1998 amendment, however, this power reaches only peripheral flaws. Each form has core components without which the document cannot be saved at all — for a holographic will, that it is in the testator’s handwriting and bears his signature; for a will before witnesses, that it is in writing and signed before two witnesses. A missing date can be cured. A missing signature cannot. The practical lesson is that this provision is a last resort, not a safety net to be relied upon in planning.

Part Four: Mutual Wills

Israeli law contains a specific regime for wills made by spouses in reliance on one another, whether executed as two documents or one. The regime governs revocation, and it is strict.

While both spouses are alive, a revocation is effective only if the spouse wishing to revoke gives written notice to the other — at which point both wills fall. After the death of one spouse, if the estate has not yet been distributed, the survivor who wishes to depart from the arrangement must renounce what he stood to receive under the mutual will; if it has been distributed, he must return what he received.

Spouses may contract out of this regime, and it does not apply to mutual wills made before the amendment came into force. For international families this is a delicate area. The common-law “joint will” and “mutual will” are not the same instrument as the Israeli mutual will, and it cannot be assumed that an arrangement made abroad will operate in Israel as the parties intended. In our practice these documents are frequently examined for the first time after one spouse has died — the point at which the room for manoeuvre is at its narrowest.

Part Five: Deposit and Registration

A will is valid whether or not it is deposited anywhere; deposit is not a condition of validity. It is nonetheless available: a will may be deposited with the Registrar of Inheritance Affairs, and a register records the existence of a will without disclosing its contents. Deposit can now be initiated online and completed by delivering the original to the relevant district office — the practical steps are set out in our note on depositing a will remotely.

For geographically dispersed families this matters more than it might appear. A deposited will does not disappear when a flat is cleared out, it is located automatically against the population registry after death, and every subsequent probate application is checked against the register — so a rival will surfacing later from a drawer has to explain itself against a document already lodged with the State. At minimum, the location of the original should be recorded and communicated to whoever will need to act on it.

Part Six: Probate — How a Will Is Enforced

An Israeli will does not operate of its own force. To act on it, the beneficiaries must obtain a probate order; where there is no will, a succession order. Either is a precondition for registering title at the Land Registry or the Israel Land Authority and for releasing funds held by Israeli banks. Until one is issued, the assets are effectively frozen — the property cannot be sold, mortgaged or substantially altered, while municipal tax, building committee charges and other running costs continue to accrue against the estate.

The main stages are these. The application is filed with the Registrar of Inheritance Affairs in the district of the deceased’s last residence, accompanied by the death certificate, the original will, affidavits confirming that notice was given to all heirs, and proof of payment of the prescribed fees. Notice of the application is then published in a daily newspaper and in the official gazette, opening a short window for objections. The file is reviewed by the Administrator General’s office, which may intervene where minors, protected persons or unlocated heirs are involved. If no objection is filed and the documentation is in order, the order is issued — and it carries the force of a judgment against the world. Our Hebrew overview of the Registrar’s powers and the application route covers the district offices and the documents each of them expects.

An objection removes the file from the Registrar to the Family Court, and a matter that would have taken months can then take years. Separately, an order once granted may later be corrected or set aside where facts or claims emerge that were not before the decision-maker — a later will, for instance, previously unknown. That power is exercised cautiously, with weight given to reliance and to finality.

Part Seven: The Cross-Border Dimension

This is the section that matters most to readers outside Israel, and it turns on three rules. The Hebrew treatment, with the case law, is set out in our article on probating a foreign will in Israel.

Jurisdiction and Choice of Law

An Israeli court has jurisdiction over a person’s succession if his residence at the date of death was in Israel or if he left assets in Israel. An apartment or a bank account is enough. Citizenship is irrelevant to the question.

The governing law is the law of the deceased’s residence at the time of death — “residence” meaning, as a matter of substance, the centre of his life, not his formal address or his passport.

But there is a critical exception: assets that can only be transferred under the law of the place where they are located — Israeli real estate above all — devolve under Israeli law regardless.

The result is that a single estate is split between two legal regimes. A Tel Aviv apartment left by a New York resident passes under Israeli law, while his Israeli bank account, his shares and his other movable rights pass under New York law. Two systems, one file.

Proving Foreign Law

Israeli courts do not take judicial notice of foreign law; it must be proved. Where the deceased was resident abroad, the application is transferred to the Family Court, and the heirs are required to file an expert opinion on foreign law — a formal report from a lawyer qualified in the jurisdiction of residence, setting out who inherits there, in what shares, and what that jurisdiction requires for a will to be formally valid.

This requirement takes most families by surprise, in cost and in delay alike. It also explains why evidence of the deceased’s connection to Israel is worth assembling early. Records of national insurance payments, tax filings, business activity, rental income and visits may support the position that the centre of his life was in Israel — and, if accepted, remove the need for a foreign law opinion altogether.

Will a Foreign Will Be Recognised?

Generally yes, as to form. The guiding principle is respect for the law of the place of execution: a will validly made under the law of the country where it was signed will be recognised in Israel, provided it does not offend public policy. Israel is a party to the 1961 Hague Convention on the form of testamentary dispositions, which widens further the range of connecting factors sufficient to sustain formal validity.

Recognition in principle, however, does not remove the practical obstacles:

Translation and authentication. A will in Hebrew or Arabic needs no translation; one in English usually does not, though the Registrar may require it; anything else requires a notarised Hebrew translation. Foreign public documents require an apostille under the 1961 Hague Convention, or consular authentication where the country of origin is not a party. For Israeli documents going the other way, certain certificates can now be issued with a digital apostille.

Style mismatch. Common-law wills tend to be long, heavily drafted, and built around instruments that Israeli law does not employ in the same way — trusts, pour-over provisions, executor machinery. The Israeli system handles a short, direct document drafted to Israeli standards far more comfortably.

Failure to identify the Israeli asset. A recurring problem: the foreign will never mentions the Jerusalem apartment or the Tel Aviv account by name. A general residuary clause will cover them, but the omission generates ambiguity and administrative delay.

One Will or Two?

The most frequently asked planning question does not have a single answer, but professional practice leans strongly toward a separate Israeli will covering the Israeli assets only — drafted in Hebrew, executed to Israeli requirements, and coordinated carefully with the will in the country of residence. The advantages are concrete: no translation, no authentication, no argument about which legal regime applies, and a materially shorter probate.

The principal risk in this model is conflict between the documents — most often a sweeping revocation clause (“I hereby revoke all former wills”) that inadvertently destroys the will in the other country. Each document must state precisely what it governs, by territory and by asset class. Equally important is checking whether the other jurisdiction recognises forced heirship, as France and much of Continental Europe do, and whether it permits territorial division of wills at all.

Acting From Abroad

An heir living overseas does not need to travel to Israel. An Israeli lawyer can be appointed under a power of attorney signed before a local notary and authenticated by apostille; affidavits may be sworn before a local notary or an Israeli consular officer. The work of an עו”ד לענייני ירושות צוואות ואפוטרופסות בישראל experienced in cross-border files lies largely in bridging the gap between what a foreign notary produces and what the Israeli Registrar will accept.

Expect a longer timetable than a domestic estate. Where a local file may conclude in a few months, a foreign-resident file commonly runs to half a year or more, and materially longer where an objection is filed or a foreign law opinion is required.

Part Eight: Tax

In Israel: No Inheritance Tax — But Tax on Realisation

Israel abolished estate duty in 1981 and has levied neither an inheritance tax nor an estate tax since. This applies uniformly, regardless of the citizenship or residence of either the deceased or the heir. Receiving the asset is simply not a taxable event.

What is deferred is not eliminated. On a later sale of inherited real estate, Israeli capital gains tax on land — mas shevach — applies, and the gain is computed from the date the deceased originally acquired the property, not from the date of death. This is a fundamental divergence from US law, which generally gives heirs a stepped-up basis at death, and it regularly produces an unwelcome surprise: a property bought in 1974 and sold in 2026 carries fifty years of gain, not two.

Against that, Israeli law provides a specific exemption on the sale of an inherited residential apartment, available where the heir is the deceased’s spouse, descendant, or the spouse of a descendant; the deceased owned only one apartment before death; and the deceased, had he sold it in his lifetime, would himself have been exempt. Whether the conditions are met should be established before the sale is agreed, not afterwards. Note also that the exemption’s application to a non-resident heir depends on his own housing position in his country of residence.

In the Country of Residence

The absence of Israeli inheritance tax says nothing about liability elsewhere. Two examples dominate:

The United States taxes citizens and green card holders on their worldwide estate, Israeli assets included, subject to the federal exemption; a non-citizen non-resident faces US estate tax on US-situated assets with a far smaller exemption. The 1975 Israel–US tax convention addresses income tax, not estate tax — so there is no treaty mechanism relieving double taxation in this area.

The United Kingdom imposes inheritance tax at substantial rates, keyed to domicile rather than mere residence, and the concept of domicile is both broad and notoriously difficult to shed.

Israeli-resident heirs receiving assets from abroad face reporting obligations in Israel in respect of the asset and any income it produces, even where the inheritance itself is untaxed. In cross-border estates, structure and timing of realisation are worth planning in advance, and in some cases worth clarifying with the tax authority before the event.

Part Nine: Instruments Often Confused With a Will

A significant proportion of enquiries arise from conflating the will with instruments that sit near it:

An enduring power of attorney operates during the grantor’s lifetime, when he can no longer manage his own affairs, and expires on death. It does not govern the distribution of property and is not a substitute for a will. Its entry into force is a separate administrative step handled by the Administrator General.
A statement of wishes allows a parent or guardian of a minor or of a person with a disability to express a preference as to who should continue caring for them.
A “living will,” or advance medical directive, concerns end-of-life medical treatment, not property. The similarity of the names generates constant misunderstanding.
Joint bank accounts and jointly held real estate sometimes transfer outside the estate in practice, but the legal effect in Israel depends on the parties’ intention and on the contract with the bank. It is not identical to a common-law joint tenancy with right of survivorship, and the analogy should not be relied upon.

Part Ten: Recurring Mistakes

A foreign will alone, with no express reference to the Israeli asset — producing delay, the cost of translations and a foreign law opinion, and sometimes a dispute over construction.
A blanket revocation clause in one document that inadvertently destroys the will in the other country.
A beneficiary serving as a witness, voiding the gift in his favour.
Stale beneficiary designations on provident funds, pensions and life policies, directing the bulk of the wealth contrary to the will.
Assuming there is no tax at all — there is no inheritance tax, but there is capital gains tax on sale, and there may well be estate tax in the country of residence.
Mutual wills executed abroad on the assumption that the revocation rules will mirror Israel’s.
No contemporaneous record of capacity where the will was made in old age or during illness — an open invitation to a challenge.
The original cannot be found. A will without an original is a serious obstacle; deposit or registration substantially reduces the risk.

Conclusion

Israeli law protects testamentary freedom, but conditions it on formal discipline and on an administrative process with no shortcuts. For a family whose assets and members are all in Israel, the regime is clear and manageable. For a family spread between countries, an additional layer arrives: the question of residence, the split between real property and everything else, the requirement to prove foreign law, authentication and translation, and the gap between two tax systems.

The practical conclusion is consistent — plan early rather than react late. Anyone holding Israeli assets while living abroad benefits from an orderly review during their lifetime: which documents exist, what each of them governs territorially, who is actually named on the beneficiary forms, and whether any of it needs updating in light of changes in the family or the portfolio. Conducted with guidance from an עו”ד לענייני ירושות צוואות ואפוטרופסות בישראל who also understands the foreign dimension, that review takes a meeting or two. Skipping it can cost the next generation years.

Official Sources and Further Reading

Israeli Government Sources

Administrator General and Registrar of Inheritance Affairs, Ministry of Justice — the unit responsible for succession orders, probate orders and deposited wills.
Application for a probate order (צו קיום צוואה) — documents, fees, publication and expected timetable.
Application for a succession order (צו ירושה) — the route where the deceased left no will.
Deposit of a will with the Registrar — online and in-person deposit, and withdrawal of a deposited will.
District offices of the Registrar of Inheritance Affairs — opening hours, appointments and contact details.
Drafting and depositing an enduring power of attorney — Administrator General.
Bringing an enduring power of attorney into force — Administrator General.
Certification of Israeli public documents (apostille), Ministry of Foreign Affairs — the competent authority for state-issued certificates.
Digital apostille service — for digitally issued certificates.
Israel Tax Authority — real estate taxation, mas shevach and reporting obligations.
Israel Land Authority — ownership and registration — registration of rights in State land and leasehold interests.

About the Author

Rachel (Rachelle) Shachar is an Israeli advocate and notary practising in inheritance, wills, estates and guardianship — רחל שחר מומחית מדורגת בין 50 עורכי הדין המובילים in the Duns100 ranking for inheritance, family and divorce law. Her firm, Rachel Rachelle Shachar & Co., Advocates and Notary, handles the drafting of wills in all statutory forms, strategic succession planning, the administration of estates in Israel and abroad, objections to probate and contested inheritance litigation, as well as guardianship and enduring powers of attorney — including representation of foreign-resident clients conducting Israeli proceedings from overseas.

Note: This article is a general survey of the law as at the date of writing and does not constitute legal or tax advice. Israeli and foreign law change from time to time, and the outcome of any case depends on its own facts. It should not be relied upon without consulting a lawyer experienced in succession law — and, in cross-border estates, without parallel advice in the country of residence.

Wills in Israel for Foreign Residents | Adv. Rachel Schachar

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