Wills and Estates

Our Firm has extensive experience handling all types of matters relating to Wills, Intestacies and Estates. We help our clients in estate planning, as well providing counsel to clients pertaining to  matters of future estates. We handle drafting wills, including mutual wills and probation proceedings of both wills and intestate estates. We are equally experienced in handling litigation pertaining  to wills, intestacy, estates, and related matters.

When advising our clients we try to reconcile the many aspects of the complex and sensitive mix of the client's desires and needs. Those may include the desire to bequeath property in a specific manner, the need to handle property and financial affairs at an older age, relationships with those closest to them and  the legal constraints applicable to the client's situation. These legal issues sometimes include rules of foreign legal systems that may apply or inheritance tax issues that may apply outside Israel, (as no Israeli estate taxes currently exist).

We often deal with: managing estates, serving as administrators and executors of estates or representation of the same; compliance with estates management reporting requirements (many times a complex process) and distribution of estate assets. Our Firm has extensive experience in legal proceedings related to wills and estates including identifying and locating property included in an estate (the scope of estate), undue influence in making wills and property transfers, testamentary capacity, invalidity of wills, defects in the form of a will, recovering property taken from an estate by heirs or third parties, monetary claims filed by estates, etc.

Our firm also specializes in consulting and planning the division of estates including drafting agreements between heirs to effect estate distribution in manners different than prescribed by law or will of the deceased, an act which is sometimes required in order to achieve effective real estate tax planning or to resolve other personal situation of heirs.

We further help our clients who want to control the medical treatment they should (or should not) receive in situations of hard and unfortunate  medical conditions by drafting advance directives (known as "living wills") and granting power of attorney according to the provisions of the Dying Patient Act.