How a UK Creditor Turned an English Judgment Into NIS 1.78M in Israel

Result: An English High Court judgment for GBP 412,000 declared enforceable in Israel and NIS 1,780,000 recovered · Timeline: 19 months from instruction to final payment · Challenge: A judgment debtor who had moved his life and his money to Israel · Authority: Tel Aviv District Court, Execution Office (Hotza'a la'Poal) · Financial Impact: NIS 1,780,000 collected on a debt written off internally as unrecoverable

Background

The English half of this story was already finished when we were instructed. A family-owned trading company near Manchester had sued a former business partner over unpaid invoices and a personal guarantee, and in early 2024 the High Court gave judgment for GBP 412,000 plus costs. Then nothing happened. The defendant had sold his Salford house, closed his UK accounts, and moved to an apartment in Herzliya where he holds Israeli citizenship through his mother.

The company's English solicitors did what English solicitors can do. They obtained the judgment, they tried to enforce it, and they reported back that the debtor had no visible assets in England and Wales. The directors, two brothers in their fifties, had already written the debt off in the accounts. One of them asked a fairly reasonable question before instructing us: does an English judgment mean anything at all in Israel?

It means a great deal, as it turns out, but not automatically and not forever.

The Challenge

An English judgment has no force of its own in Israel. It is a piece of paper from a foreign court until an Israeli court declares it enforceable under the Foreign Judgments Enforcement Law 5718-1958, and that declaration has to be applied for, argued, and won. Section 3 of that law sets out what the applicant must establish: that the judgment came from a state whose own law gave its courts competence to give it, that it is no longer open to appeal, that the obligation it imposes is one Israeli law can enforce and does not offend public policy, and that it remains executable where it was given.

Section 4 adds the reciprocity requirement. An Israeli court will not declare a foreign judgment enforceable if it came from a country that refuses to enforce Israeli judgments. For most countries that turns into an evidential exercise, with expert opinions on foreign law and arguments about whether reciprocity is theoretical or real. British creditors are in a better position than almost anyone else, and most of them have no idea why.

The reason is a treaty. Israel and the United Kingdom signed a Convention providing for the reciprocal recognition and enforcement of judgments in civil matters in London on 28 October 1970, and it came into effect the following year for judgments given from 26 July 1971 onward. Two Exchanges of Notes, in 1974 and 2002, adjusted it since. On the British side the Convention was given effect by the Reciprocal Enforcement of Foreign Judgments (Israel) Order 1971, which extended Part I of the Foreign Judgments (Reciprocal Enforcement) Act 1933 to judgments of the superior courts of Israel. So the reciprocity question that costs applicants from other countries months of expert evidence was, for our client, a treaty citation.

The harder obstacle was time. Section 5 refuses to hear an enforcement application filed more than five years after the date of the judgment, unless Israel has agreed a different period with that state or the court finds special reasons for the delay. Creditors lose good claims to that clock constantly, usually because they spend three years chasing assets in their own country first and only then look abroad. We were fourteen months out. That was comfortable, and we did not intend to test the special-reasons exception.

In Practice: Under Section 3 of the Foreign Judgments Enforcement Law 5718-1958, an application to declare a foreign judgment enforceable is filed in the District Court, not the Magistrates' Court, whatever the sum involved. The court fee is a fixed amount of roughly NIS 1,141 rather than a percentage of the debt, which makes the application cheap relative to what is at stake. Section 5 imposes a five-year deadline running from the date of the foreign judgment, not from the date the creditor discovers the debtor's Israeli assets. An uncontested application at the Tel Aviv District Court typically takes 3 to 5 months; ours was contested and took 7.

What We Did

The first job was assembling documents that an Israeli judge would accept, and this is where cross-border enforcement usually goes wrong before it starts.

We needed a sealed, certified copy of the High Court judgment from the court office, not the solicitors' file copy, carrying an apostille from the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office. We needed proof that the appeal period had expired without an appeal, which the English court will confirm on request but does not volunteer. And all of it had to be in Hebrew.

That last point catches British claimants regularly. A translation certified by a UK translation agency, however professional, is not what the Israeli court is asking for, because Britain has no system of sworn or court-appointed translators. What Israeli practice requires is a notarial confirmation of translation issued under Section 15 of the Notaries Law 1976 by an Israeli notary who personally reads both languages. We arranged those in Tel Aviv. The same logic applies to almost every foreign document heading into an Israeli file, and it is set out at length in our guide to certified translation for Israeli legal documents.

The directors signed a power of attorney before an English notary public, apostilled by the FCDO, and never travelled. In nineteen months neither of them set foot in Israel.

Then we filed, and the debtor fought. His defence ran on Section 6, which lists the grounds that defeat an otherwise valid foreign judgment: that it was obtained by fraud, that the defendant had no reasonable opportunity to argue his case and bring his evidence, that the foreign court lacked competence under Israeli rules of private international law, that the judgment conflicts with another binding judgment between the same parties, or that an Israeli proceeding on the same matter was already pending when the English action began. He argued the second ground, saying he had never been properly served in England and had learned of the judgment only afterwards.

That argument fails or succeeds on the service file, which is why we had asked the English solicitors for it on day one. They had served him at his Salford address before he left, with a certificate of service, and he had instructed English counsel to file an acknowledgment of service before going quiet. The court read the file and rejected the defence. A defendant who engages and then disengages has had his opportunity.

In Practice: Section 10 of the Foreign Judgments Enforcement Law 5718-1958 provides that once declared enforceable, a foreign judgment is treated for enforcement purposes as if an Israeli court had given it. The creditor then opens a file at the Execution Office (Hotza'a la'Poal), which can attach bank accounts in the debtor's name through a third-party attachment order, usually landing at the banks within 7 to 14 days of the file opening. In this case the first round of attachments froze NIS 240,000 across three accounts before the debtor knew the file existed.

The Outcome

The declaration came through seven months after filing. The judgment converted at the Bank of Israel representative rate, and with the 8 per cent statutory interest that had run on it in England under the Judgments Act 1838 plus costs, the Israeli file opened at just over NIS 2,140,000.

Collection then went the way these files usually go, which is to say in stages and not politely. The bank attachments produced NIS 240,000 quickly. An asset investigation turned up a half share in the Herzliya apartment, and here the enforcement stalled, because Section 38 of the Execution Law 5727-1967 does not let the Execution Registrar sell a debtor's home and evict the family until satisfied that reasonable alternative housing exists or has been arranged. That protection is real, it is not a formality, and creditors who assume an apartment equals cash are usually disappointed. The debtor also had twenty days from the warning to ask to sell the apartment himself.

What moved him was not the apartment. It was the exit order. Under Section 14 of the Execution Law the Registrar can bar a debtor from leaving Israel where there is reason to think he will go without paying, and our client's debtor had a married daughter in London. He discovered the order the way most people do, at the departure hall at Ben Gurion. Six weeks later his lawyer proposed terms.

The settlement was NIS 1,780,000, paid as NIS 900,000 immediately from a sale of business assets and the balance over eleven monthly instalments secured by a charge, with the exit order lifted on the final payment. The brothers in Manchester recovered roughly 83 per cent of a debt their accountant had already written off.

Key Takeaways

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

1. British judgments have a treaty advantage in Israel. The 1970 Convention and the Reciprocal Enforcement of Foreign Judgments (Israel) Order 1971 settle the Section 4 reciprocity question that applicants from most other countries must prove with expert evidence, which removes both an argument and several months.
2. The five-year clock in Section 5 runs from the date of the foreign judgment, not from the day you find the debtor. Chasing assets at home first and looking abroad later is how good claims die.
3. Get the service file from your home solicitors before you file in Israel. Section 6 makes the defendant's opportunity to be heard the standard defence, and the answer to it lives in a file most creditors never ask for.
4. A UK translation agency's certificate is not accepted. Israeli courts want a notarial confirmation of translation under Section 15 of the Notaries Law 1976, prepared in Israel by a notary who reads both languages.
5. An Israeli apartment is not a cash asset. Section 38 of the Execution Law 5727-1967 protects a debtor's home until alternative housing is arranged, so the pressure that produces settlements usually comes from bank attachments and exit orders instead.

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Facing a Similar Situation?

If you hold a judgment from a court in England, Scotland, or Northern Ireland against someone who has assets or a life in Israel, the debt is not lost, but the five-year window is shorter than most creditors realise and the documents take longer to assemble than the application takes to file.

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