A Tel Aviv Family Court has exposed what it described as a brazen attempt to mislead creditors and the court itself, involving a family dispute over an inheritance. The case centered on a woman who died leaving a will naming her daughter-in-law as the sole heir, while her children, the daughter-in-law’s husband and his sister, tried to block probate and inherit the estate themselves.
According to the evidence presented, the siblings were embroiled in litigation with a foreign bank for tens of millions of euros and feared that, if they inherited their mother’s estate, creditors would seize it. They therefore arranged for a will naming the daughter-in-law as heir, with an understanding that she would later transfer half the inheritance to the sister after the debt issues were resolved. That plan collapsed when the daughter-in-law and her husband later fell out, and she no longer wanted to hand over the inheritance.
The siblings argued that their mother had revoked the will a few months later, claiming only one original copy existed, kept in her drawer, and that she destroyed it after deciding to cancel it. They also submitted a handwritten, signed note allegedly proving the revocation, and called a cousin who is a lawyer to testify that the deceased had consulted him on cancelling the will and that he advised her to write the note. The court rejected all of it, finding multiple contradictions and accepting a handwriting expert’s conclusion that the note was forged.
The judge said he was embarrassed to record that a lawyer had not testified truthfully, and concluded that the case reflected a coordinated scheme to deceive the court. The siblings’ fallback claim, that the will was fictitious because the mother really wanted her children to inherit and had only used the will to hide assets from creditors, was also dismissed. The court upheld the will, confirming the former daughter-in-law as sole heir, and ordered the siblings to pay her nearly NIS 600,000 in legal costs.
