Maintenance From an Israeli Estate and Foreign Heirs

Two brothers in Toronto obtained a succession order for their late father's Ramat Gan apartment and assumed the file was finished. Six weeks later a claim landed at the Tel Aviv Family Court from a woman they had met twice, their father's partner of the last nine years, who had lived in that apartment and had no income of her own. She was not named in his will. She was not a legal heir. She was, on the face of it, entitled to be supported out of the estate, and the apartment could not be sold until the court dealt with her.

Most heirs abroad have never heard of this. Israeli succession has a second layer sitting underneath the question of who inherits, and it answers a different question: who needs to be supported. The two answers do not always match, and where they diverge the support claim is paid first.

What Maintenance From the Estate Actually Is

Chapter Four of the Succession Law 1965, Sections 56 to 65, creates a right called maintenance from the estate. Section 56 states the principle in a single line: where the deceased left a spouse, children or parents who need maintenance, they are entitled to maintenance out of the estate.

Read that carefully, because three things follow from it.

The right is based on need, not on status as an heir. A claimant does not have to be an heir at all, and being an heir does not remove the right if the share received is not enough to live on.

It applies whether the estate passes on intestacy or under a will. A testator who leaves everything to his children in Melbourne cannot use the will to defeat a maintenance claim by his widow, because Section 56 is not conditional on the absence of a will.

And it is a charge on the estate, which means it reduces what the heirs receive. This is not a claim against the beneficiaries personally. It is a deduction taken before the division.

That last point is what makes it a live problem for people abroad. A succession order tells you what fraction of the estate is yours. It does not tell you what the estate will still be worth once a dependant has been provided for.

Who Can Claim and For How Long

Section 57 sets out the entitlement and its duration, and the boundaries are tighter than most claimants hope.

| Claimant | Entitlement under Section 57 | |----------|------------------------------| | Surviving spouse | For as long as widowhood continues | | Child of the deceased | Until the age of 18 | | Disabled child | For as long as the disability continues | | Adult child | Up to the age of 23, at the court's discretion | | Parent of the deceased | For life, where the deceased supported them |

Section 58 adds that maintenance covers more than food and rent. It extends to the cost of vocational training and education, which in practice is how an award for a claimant in their early twenties is usually justified.

The category that produces most of the surprise for foreign heirs is the surviving spouse, because Israeli law recognises a reputed spouse, a partner in a shared household who was never formally married. Where that relationship is proved, the partner falls within Section 56 as a spouse and can claim maintenance even though the family abroad had no idea the relationship was legally significant. The proof burden is real and these claims are often contested, but they succeed often enough that no one should assume the absence of a marriage certificate ends the matter.

In Practice: Under Sections 56 and 57 of the Succession Law 1965, a surviving partner who establishes reputed-spouse status can obtain a maintenance award from the Family Court that runs for as long as she does not remarry, which on a NIS 4,000,000 estate commonly translates into a monthly award in the NIS 4,000 to NIS 8,000 range plus a right of residence in the family apartment. The Family Court sitting in the district where the deceased lived, most often Tel Aviv or Jerusalem, will hear the claim over 8 to 18 months, and it can and does freeze dealings in the property while the claim is pending. Heirs abroad who have already instructed an Israeli estate agent should assume the sale will not complete inside that period.

How the Court Measures the Claim

Section 59 lists the factors, and it rewards preparation by whoever is defending the estate.

The court weighs the value of the estate. It weighs what the claimant is already receiving as an heir, which is why a widow who takes a substantial statutory share rarely also obtains a large maintenance award. It looks at the standard of living the household maintained before the death, at the claimant's own property and income, and at other sources of maintenance available to them, including obligations owed by other people.

None of those factors is mechanical. The court is doing an assessment, and the outcome moves considerably depending on the quality of the evidence. Foreign heirs lose ground here for a predictable reason: the claimant lives in Israel, has the bank statements, the utility bills, the medical records and the neighbours, and the heirs have a bundle of documents in another language and a lawyer they have never met in person. Building a proper picture of the claimant's actual resources, including foreign assets and pensions, takes an Israeli lawyer instructed early rather than after the first hearing.

Section 61 gives the court flexibility in how it pays: periodic payments, a lump sum, or a combination, with power to attach conditions and require security. A capitalised lump sum is often the outcome heirs abroad should be pushing for, because it closes the file and allows the estate to be distributed and the property sold. An open-ended monthly order does the opposite.

The Deadline That Catches Heirs Abroad

Section 60 is short and it decides more cases than any other provision in the chapter. An application for maintenance must be filed before the estate is distributed. The court may entertain an application filed within six months after distribution, but that is a discretion, exercised on the circumstances, not an entitlement.

For an heir living outside Israel this cuts in both directions, and it is worth being honest about which side you are on.

If you are defending the estate, distribution is your protection, and every week that the estate sits undistributed in an Israeli lawyer's trust account is a week in which a claim can still be brought as of right. Heirs abroad routinely leave funds parked in Israel for months while they argue about exchange rates or wait for a tax clearance, without realising they are holding the window open.

If you are the person who needs support, the same rule is a trap in reverse. Learning about a death late, which is common when a family is spread across three countries, can mean the assets are gone before you can act, and you are then arguing for a discretionary extension against heirs who have already moved the money offshore.

In Practice: Section 60 of the Succession Law 1965 measures the deadline from distribution of the estate rather than from the date of death or the date of the succession order, so an estate that is left undistributed for two years remains fully exposed to a maintenance claim brought on day one of year three. Filing at the Family Court and serving heirs at addresses abroad through the Hague Service Convention adds 8 to 16 weeks to any timetable. Israeli legal costs for defending a contested maintenance claim through to judgment typically run NIS 15,000 to NIS 40,000 per heir group, which on a modest estate can exceed what is being argued about.

When Gifts Made Before Death Are Pulled Back

Section 63 addresses the obvious avoidance route. Where the estate does not hold enough to satisfy maintenance, the court may treat property that the deceased gave away without adequate consideration during the two years before death as though it were still part of the estate. Ordinary and customary gifts are carved out.

This matters to foreign heirs in a specific and uncomfortable way. Elderly parents in Israel often transfer an apartment to a child during their lifetime, sometimes for genuine planning reasons and sometimes because a family member pressed for it. Where that transfer happened inside the two-year window and a dependant is left without support, the child who received the apartment can find it treated as estate property for the purpose of the claim, even though the Land Registry shows the transfer as complete.

Israeli lawyers see this most often where the transferee is one of several siblings and the others knew nothing about it. The maintenance claim then becomes the mechanism through which the whole transfer is examined. If a transfer of this kind sits in your family's recent history, it should be disclosed to your Israeli lawyer at the outset rather than discovered by the other side.

Waivers, Agreements and Why They Fail

Section 65 is unusually blunt. An agreement about maintenance from the estate, or a waiver of it, made during the deceased's lifetime, is void. Made after the death, it requires court approval. The right cannot be transferred, cannot be charged or attached, and does not itself pass by inheritance.

The practical consequence is that the reassuring document a family sometimes waves at me, signed by a second spouse before the marriage, promising not to claim against the estate, is worth nothing on its own for these purposes. It may still have evidential value, and it may be relevant to a prenuptial property arrangement, which is a different subject. As a bar to a Section 56 claim it fails.

Where a settlement is reached after the death, it must go to the Family Court for approval. That is not a formality, and courts do scrutinise settlements where the claimant was unrepresented or where the disparity between the claim and the settlement is stark.

How Maintenance Sits Against Other Estate Debts

Section 104 sets the order in which estate liabilities are cleared, beginning with funeral, burial and headstone expenses, then the costs of the succession proceedings and administration, then the debts of the deceased. Heirs take what is left.

Maintenance from the estate is not simply another line in that queue; it operates as a charge that the court fixes on the estate, and the court will not allow distribution to defeat it. What this means in practice for an heir abroad is that the number in the succession order is the top of the range, never the amount you will actually receive. Israeli estate debts and creditor claims deserve their own review before you commit to anything, and the mechanics are set out in our guide to Israeli estate debts and creditor claims for foreign heirs.

Where Domicile Changes the Answer

There is a threshold question that heirs abroad should ask before assuming any of this applies.

Section 137 of the Succession Law 1965 applies the law of the deceased's domicile at the date of death to the succession, and Section 135 defines domicile as the place where the person's centre of life was. Where a parent had genuinely relocated to Florida, London or Sydney and died there, an Israeli court seized of the estate under Section 136, because there are assets in Israel, will be applying that foreign law rather than the Israeli maintenance chapter. Family provision then depends on what the foreign system offers, which in England is the 1975 Act, in most US states is a spousal elective share, and in France is the reserve.

Where the parent kept their centre of life in Israel, whatever their passport said, Sections 56 to 65 apply in full to the estate, including assets held outside Israel.

Domicile is therefore not a technicality in these files; it is often the whole case, and it is fact-heavy. The same evidence that decides a will contest tends to decide this question too, which is why the two arguments are usually run together. Our guide to contesting an Israeli will from abroad covers how the Israeli court approaches that evidence.

What Often Goes Wrong

Heirs abroad make the same three errors, in roughly the same order.

They treat the succession order as the finish line. It establishes entitlement; it does not clear the estate.

They fail to identify who was actually living with and depending on the deceased, because they were not there. A carer, a long-term partner, an adult disabled sibling, an elderly mother in a nursing home whose fees the deceased was quietly covering. Every one of those is a potential Section 56 claimant, and every one is easier to assess before proceedings than after.

And they distribute selectively, sending money to whoever presses hardest, which leaves the estate short when a claim lands.

Common Mistake: Heirs abroad who instruct an Israeli lawyer to transfer the estate funds to them as soon as the succession order issues, while a dependant of the deceased is still living in the family apartment. That transfer does not extinguish the claim; Section 60 of the Succession Law 1965 lets the Family Court entertain an application for six months after distribution, and Section 63 allows earlier transfers without adequate consideration to be treated as estate property. The heirs then defend the claim from abroad with the money already converted and spent, and an adverse award has to be funded personally. Recovering the position adds 8 to 18 months and NIS 15,000 to NIS 40,000 in Israeli legal costs.

Practical Checklist

• Before applying for a succession order, establish who was living with the deceased and who depended on them financially
• Ask specifically about a partner who was never married to the deceased, because reputed-spouse status is the most common surprise
• Check whether any property was transferred out of the estate in the two years before death
• Confirm the deceased's domicile at death, since Section 137 may put the estate under foreign law entirely
• Do not distribute the estate while a potential claimant is in occupation of estate property or in correspondence with your Israeli lawyer
• If a claim is made, obtain evidence of the claimant's own income, property and pension entitlements early, including assets held outside Israel
• Push for a capitalised lump sum rather than an open-ended monthly order, so the estate can be closed and property sold
• Have any post-death settlement approved by the Family Court, since Section 65 makes approval a condition of validity

Speak With an Israeli Attorney

Maintenance claims are decided on evidence about need and about the family's real living arrangements, and heirs abroad are almost always starting that exercise from behind. Whether you are defending an estate against a claim or you are the person who was left without support, the position should be assessed before the estate is distributed, because distribution is what closes the door.

Contact us for a confidential initial consultation about a maintenance claim against an Israeli estate.