How a Daughter Kept Her Late Father's Tel Aviv Apartment

Result: Will execution order granted, the Tel Aviv apartment worth about NIS 3.2 million passed in full to the daughter, and the son's reserved-share claim was confined to French-sited assets · Timeline: 9 months including a filed objection · Challenge: French forced heirship gives a disinherited child a guaranteed share, and the son assumed it followed the property to Israel · Authority: Inheritance Registrar, Family Court, Israel Tax Authority · Financial Impact: A reserved share of roughly one third of the flat's value that the son could not extract from the Israeli asset

Background

A widower in Lyon spent his last years being looked after by one of his two children. His daughter had moved to Israel years earlier, and when his health failed she brought him to live near her in the centre of the country and managed everything, the doctors, the carers, the day-to-day of a dependent parent. His son stayed in Paris and kept his distance.

The father owned an apartment in Tel Aviv, bought decades ago and now his most valuable asset. He made an Israeli will leaving it to his daughter and said as much to anyone who asked. When he died, the daughter came to us to have the will recognised. She expected a formality. Instead, within weeks, a letter arrived from a French lawyer acting for her brother, asserting that under French law he was entitled to a fixed share of his father's estate no matter what the will said, and that this included the Tel Aviv flat. He wanted his portion of the apartment or its value, and he was prepared to litigate for it.

The Challenge

French succession law does not let a parent freely disinherit a child. It reserves a guaranteed portion of the estate, the réserve héréditaire, for the children, and the share grows with their number: half the estate for one child, two thirds split between two, three quarters split among three or more. With two children, the son's reserved entitlement was a third of the estate, and only the remaining "quotité disponible" could be given away by will. On the face of it, leaving the whole apartment to one child looked like exactly the kind of disinheritance French law forbids. That is what the brother's lawyer was banking on.

The answer turned on a question the son had never thought to ask: which country's law decides who inherits a Tel Aviv apartment? France was applying its own succession rules, including the reserve, to the entire estate. But Israel is not bound by French law or by the European succession rules France operates under, and Israel has its own view about property sitting on Israeli soil.

Israeli private international law treats real estate in Israel as governed by Israeli law. Israeli succession law, in turn, contains no forced heirship at all. A person of sound mind may leave an Israeli apartment to one child, to a stranger, or to a charity, and the disinherited relatives have no reserved slice to claim. So while French law said the son was owed a third, the law that actually governed the apartment said the father's wishes stood. Two legal systems, one flat, opposite answers, and the flat was in Israel.

In Practice: Under the conflict-of-laws provisions of the Succession Law 1965 (Section 137 onward), succession is in principle governed by the law of the deceased's domicile, but succession to immovable property located in Israel is routed back to Israeli law under the same chapter, so an Israeli apartment is decided by Israeli internal succession rules. Those rules impose no reserved share, which is why a will leaving the whole flat to one heir holds. The will execution order (tzav kiyum tzava'a) is issued by the Inheritance Registrar (Rasham HaYerushot), but once an heir files a formal objection the file transfers to the Family Court, which needs roughly 6 to 14 months to dispose of a contested cross-border will. Here the apartment was worth about NIS 3.2 million, so the son's notional third exceeded NIS 1 million, which is why he fought.

What We Did

We moved to secure the will before the dispute hardened, and we prepared for the objection we knew was coming.

We filed the application for the will execution order with the Inheritance Registrar, with the original Israeli will, the death certificate apostilled in France and translated into Hebrew, and the daughter's supporting affidavit. The brother lodged his objection, so the matter moved to the Family Court as expected, and there we made the conflict-of-laws argument squarely. The apartment is Israeli immovable property. Israeli law governs it. Israeli law recognises full testamentary freedom and no réserve. The French reserved share, whatever its force inside France, has no grip on an asset that Israeli law hands to the daughter under a valid Israeli will. The father's clear, repeatedly stated intention was evidence, but the legal spine of the case was situs, not sentiment.

We also told the daughter the honest limit of her win, because a good result abroad is not the same as a clean result everywhere. France reformed its Civil Code in 2021 to give a disinherited child a compensatory levy where a foreign law leaves them with no reserved share, but that levy reaches only assets located in France. It cannot be executed against the Tel Aviv apartment. If the father had held French bank accounts or French property, the son could have clawed his reserved share out of those. Here the French-sited estate was small, so the brother's remedy, while real on paper, had little to bite on. This is exactly why we so often advise cross-border families to keep a separate Israeli will for their Israeli assets and to plan the French and Israeli estates as one picture rather than two.

In Practice: Israel has levied no estate or inheritance tax since the Estate Tax Law was repealed in 1981, so the apartment passed to the daughter free of any Israeli death duty. The tax that matters arrives later. When she sells, betterment tax (mas shevach) is assessed by the Israel Tax Authority on the gain measured from her father's original acquisition cost and date, because an Israeli heir inherits the deceased's tax position with no step-up in basis. On an apartment bought decades ago the taxable gain can be large, and the sole-residence exemption under Section 49b(5) of the Real Estate Taxation Law 1963 only helps if she meets its conditions, so the sale needs its own planning 30 to 60 days before signing, not after.

The Outcome

The Family Court issued the will execution order in the daughter's favour, and the apartment was registered to her at the Land Registry (Tabu). The son's objection did not overcome the situs rule, and his French reserved share, enforceable only against French assets through the 2021 compensatory levy, found almost nothing to attach to because his father had left his wealth in Israel. He kept a theoretical entitlement and recovered little in practice.

The daughter kept her father's apartment, which is what he wanted and what he had told everyone he wanted. The case did not turn on how much he loved her. It turned on where the apartment sat.

Key Takeaways

What this case illustrates for non-residents in similar situations:

1. French forced heirship does not automatically follow property into Israel. Israeli law governs Israeli real estate, and Israeli succession law has no reserved share, so an Israeli will can leave an apartment to one child.
2. Where the asset sits is the decisive question in a cross-border estate. A reserved-share claim that looks unbeatable under French law can be powerless against an Israeli flat.
3. France's 2021 compensatory levy protects disinherited children, but only against assets located in France. It cannot be executed against an Israeli apartment, so the make-up of the estate on each side of the border decides who really recovers what.
4. A clear, valid Israeli will for Israeli assets is worth far more than a foreign will that mentions them. It gives the Israeli court a document written in the system that governs the property.
5. There is no Israeli inheritance tax, but betterment tax on a later sale is calculated from the deceased's original cost. An heir who plans the eventual sale keeps far more than one who signs first and asks later.

---

Facing a Similar Situation?

If a relative abroad is asserting a forced-heirship or reserved-share claim over an Israeli apartment, or you are the heir named in an Israeli will and worried a foreign law will override it, the answer usually turns on where the asset sits and which court decides.

Contact us for a confidential consultation about your Israeli legal matter.