Court Upholds Nephew's Inheritance of Family Home After Will Dispute
A Tel Aviv Family Court judge has ruled in favor of a nephew who claimed a standard clause in a later will mistakenly invalidated his inheritance of a family home. The case involved a 93-year-old widower with no children who owned two properties: an apartment in Tel Aviv and a house in Ness Ziona. In 2002, he executed a will leaving the Ness Ziona house to his nephew. However, in 2020, he signed a new will bequeathing "all my rights and property of any kind" to five heirs in equal shares, specifying the Tel Aviv apartment and his cash assets. Crucially, the new will contained a common concluding sentence: "This will is my last and cancels any previous will made."
The nephew argued that the deceased never intended to revoke the earlier promise of the house, asserting the cancellation clause was a standard, automatically included phrase and that his inclusion was a mistake. The two plaintiffs, who stood to inherit under the later will, contended that the new will should be honored in its entirety, distributing all assets, including the Ness Ziona house, equally among the five beneficiaries.
Judge Segalit Ofek cited inheritance law allowing for the correction of a will made in error, provided the testator's true intention can be clearly determined. The burden of proof rested on the nephew. Evidence presented included testimony about the close father-son-like relationship between the deceased and his nephew, and the fact that the nephew had invested over one million shekels in renovating the Ness Ziona house with the deceased's knowledge and consent.
Further supporting the nephew's claim, one of the plaintiffs initially seeking to uphold the later will withdrew her request mid-proceedings, stating she would accept the outcome. The lawyer who drafted the 2020 will testified that the cancellation clause was a standard format and admitted he did not recall if he had read or explained the legal implications of canceling prior wills to the deceased, who was illiterate in Hebrew and thus unable to discover the error himself. The judge also noted the plaintiffs seemed aware of the error but sought to exploit the situation.
The court dismissed a separate claim by the plaintiffs that a monthly financial support arrangement between the deceased and the nephew constituted an illegal future inheritance transaction. The judge ruled the deceased had retained the right to change his will at any time. Ultimately, Judge Ofek amended the 2020 will by striking the cancellation clause, allowing both wills to be effective. The nephew will inherit the Ness Ziona house as per the earlier will, while the other heirs will receive the Tel Aviv apartment and cash assets as per the later will. The plaintiffs were ordered to pay the nephew 60,000 shekels in legal costs.
