How UK Siblings Won Release of Their Mother's Israeli Medical File

Result: A 2024 Netanya will set aside by consent after the deceased's clinical file was produced, returning NIS 2,040,000 to two heirs in England · Timeline: 14 months · Challenge: Hospital refused the deceased's file to heirs · Authority: Family Court in Netanya and the Inheritance Registrar · Financial Impact: NIS 2,040,000

Background

Two sisters, one in Manchester and one in Leeds, are the only children of a woman who died in Netanya in October 2024 at the age of 87. Their mother had lived alone in a three room apartment near the seafront since their father's death in 2016, with a live-in carer engaged through an agency from early 2023. The estate came to roughly NIS 3,060,000: the apartment, later sold for NIS 2,750,000, and about NIS 310,000 spread across two bank accounts. In February 2025 the sisters received a notice from the Inheritance Registrar. The carer had applied for a will execution order (tzav kiyum tzava'a) on a will signed in May 2024, five months before the death, leaving the entire estate to her.

Neither sister had been in Israel since 2019. Both remembered a telephone call in the summer of 2023 in which their mother could not name the month or work out who she was speaking to, and a neighbour had mentioned a diagnosis of vascular dementia that year. What neither of them had was a single page of medical evidence. They wrote to the Netanya hospital where their mother had twice been admitted, and to her health fund (kupat holim), enclosing the Israeli death certificate and their British passports. Both refused within a fortnight.

The Challenge

The refusals were correct. Section 18 of the Patient's Rights Law 5756-1996 gives the right to receive medical information to the patient, and that right is personal. It is not an asset that passes with the estate, and death does not convert a daughter into the patient. Section 19 imposes the duty of medical confidentiality, which survives the death, and Section 20(a) sets out the closed list of gateways through which an institution may nonetheless release information: the patient's consent, a legal duty to disclose, disclosure to another caregiver for the purposes of treatment, and a decision of an ethics committee under Section 24. A relative holding a death certificate appears nowhere on that list. Both sisters had assumed the Israeli position matched the English one, where the Access to Health Records Act 1990 gives a personal representative of the deceased, and anyone with a claim arising out of the death, a statutory right of access to the records. Israel has no equivalent provision, and the mistake cost them six weeks at the worst possible moment.

The second obstacle was sequence. A legal duty to disclose has to come from somewhere, and until a proceeding exists there is nothing for a court to attach it to. That meant the objection had to be filed first. An objection to the grant is lodged with the Inheritance Registrar (Rasham HaYerushot) under Section 67 of the Succession Law 5725-1965 within the period fixed in the published notice, and only once it is filed does the file move to the Family Court, where a disclosure motion can be made. The substantive target was Section 26 of the Succession Law, which voids a will made by a person who at the time of making it did not know the nature of a will. Neither sister could appear in Israel, and the objection period was already running when they instructed us.

In Practice: Section 19 of the Patient's Rights Law 5756-1996 keeps medical confidentiality alive after death, and release is confined to the closed list in Section 20(a), so an heir with a death certificate has no standing to ask. The legal duty limb is supplied by an order of the Family Court, which becomes available only once an objection is lodged with the Inheritance Registrar under Section 67 of the Succession Law 5725-1965 within the period fixed in the published notice. From England the power of attorney was signed before a notary public, apostilled through the FCDO Legalisation Office on the standard 10 working day service, and authenticated in Israel at NIS 197 for the first signatory and NIS 77 for the second under the Notaries Regulations (Service Fees) 5738-1978.

What We Did

The objection went in first, eleven days before the published period expired, on the narrow ground that the testatrix did not know the nature of the will she signed. We deliberately did not plead undue influence at that stage. A capacity objection framed around Section 26 gives a court a clean reason to order production of a clinical record, whereas an influence claim invites the answer that the file is a fishing expedition.

Both sisters signed a specific power of attorney before a notary public, one in Manchester and one in Leeds, on the same wording. Those went to the FCDO Legalisation Office for apostille on the standard service and came back inside two weeks. We then had the signatures authenticated in Israel, which cost NIS 197 for the first signatory and NIS 77 for the second. Time zones were the only practical friction after that: the sisters were briefed by email overnight and by a single Sunday call each month.

With the file transferred to the Family Court in Netanya, we filed the production motion. Two drafting decisions mattered. First, the request was limited to the period from 1 January 2023 to the date of death rather than the whole life file, which removed the institution's privacy objection almost entirely. Second, it was directed at both holders, the hospital and the health fund, because the cognitive assessments sat in community records rather than in the discharge summaries. The carer opposed. The hospital took a neutral position and asked only to be indemnified for the copying. The order issued eleven weeks after the motion, and production was then handled through the institution's patient rights officer under Section 25 of the Patient's Rights Law, not through the ward or the treating physician.

In Practice: Production is a two stage exercise. The Family Court order supplies the Section 20(a) legal duty, and the institution's patient rights officer under Section 25 of the Patient's Rights Law 5756-1996 is the correspondent who actually assembles the file. A contested disclosure application runs NIS 5,000 to NIS 12,000 in fees, and two to four months should be allowed from filing to production where the institution stays neutral. Narrowing the request to a dated window rather than the whole record is what keeps it inside that range.

The file, when it came, ran to 340 pages. A geriatric psychiatrist instructed by us read it against the signing date and produced an opinion in seven weeks. It recorded a cognitive screening score of 17 out of 30 taken eleven weeks before the will was signed, a documented diagnosis of vascular dementia in April 2023, and a change of medication in March 2024 with a note about confusion in the evenings. The lawyer who had drafted the will had seen none of it.

The Outcome

The carer's counsel asked for a mediation after receiving the expert opinion and before the hearing on the objection. The matter settled at that mediation, fourteen months after the sisters first received the Registrar's notice. The will was withdrawn by consent, an inheritance order issued under the intestacy rules, and the carer retained one third of the estate in recognition of a documented three years of care and an unpaid wage claim she would otherwise have brought against the estate. The apartment was sold and the proceeds distributed in April 2026.

Two thirds of NIS 3,060,000, or NIS 2,040,000, returned to the daughters. Their combined legal costs, including the expert opinion, the disclosure application and the mediation, came to NIS 68,000. Neither sister travelled to Israel at any point. What is worth stating plainly is that without the clinical file there was no case at all: two recollections of a bad telephone call in 2023, against a signed and witnessed will, would not have moved a Family Court to do anything.

Key Takeaways

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

1. Do not write to the hospital first. An Israeli institution that releases a deceased patient's file to a relative is breaching Section 19, and a refusal letter in your bundle wastes weeks you cannot recover. Lodge the objection, then ask the court.
2. The Section 67 objection window is the real deadline, not the disclosure. Miss the period fixed in the published notice and you lose the proceeding, and with it the only realistic route to the records.
3. Plead capacity narrowly at the objection stage. A Section 26 objection gives a court a reason to order production of a medical record. An undue influence claim, filed first, usually does not.
4. Ask for a dated window, not the file. Limiting the request to the eighteen months around the signing removed the privacy objection and kept the application inside the NIS 5,000 to NIS 12,000 band.
5. English rights do not travel. The Access to Health Records Act 1990 gives a personal representative direct access in England; Israel gives the heirs nothing equivalent, and an English grant of probate does not change that. Our answer on obtaining a deceased relative's Israeli medical records sets out the three routes that do work.

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Facing a Similar Situation?

If a will surfaced in Israel that does not match the parent you knew in their last year, the clinical record is usually the only evidence that exists, and the window to reach it closes with the objection period. Our guide on contesting an Israeli will from abroad explains what the objection has to say and when it has to be filed.

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