Updating or Revoking an Israeli Will from Abroad

A will is not a document you sign once and forget. Marriages end, children are born, an apartment in Haifa is sold and a different one bought, a named executor dies. For a non-resident who holds Israeli assets, the question of how to change or cancel an Israeli will carries an extra layer of difficulty, because the original may sit in a lawyer's safe in Tel Aviv or on deposit with a government registrar, while the person who wants to change it lives an ocean away.

The good news is that Israeli law does not require you to be present in Israel to revoke or replace a will. The mechanics are governed by the Succession Law 1965, and they are workable from abroad. What trips people up is rarely the act of making a new will. It is the loose ends: an old copy still on file, a foreign will that quietly cancels the Israeli one, a revocation clause that reaches further than intended.

The Four Ways to Make, and Revoke, a Will

Israeli law recognises four forms of will, and understanding them matters because you revoke a will using the same toolkit you use to make one. Section 18 of the Succession Law 1965 sets out the four: a handwritten will, a will before witnesses, a will before an authority, and an oral will.

A handwritten will under Section 19 must be written entirely in the testator's own hand, dated, and signed. No witnesses are needed. It is the simplest form to execute from abroad, and the easiest to get wrong, because a single typed word or a missing date can render it defective.

A will before witnesses under Section 20 is the workhorse. It is in writing, states a date, and is signed by the testator in front of two witnesses who then attest in writing. Two witnesses are available anywhere in the world, which makes this the most practical form for most non-residents updating a will.

A will before an authority under Section 22 is made before a judge, the Registrar of Inheritance, a member of a religious court, or a notary. Abroad, an Israeli consul holds notarial powers under the Notaries Law 1976 and can take a will in this form. This is the most robust form against later challenge, because an official records it.

An oral will under Section 23 is reserved for a person who is dying or sees themselves facing death, made before two witnesses. It is a narrow emergency form, not a planning tool, and lapses if the testator survives.

How Revocation Actually Works Under Section 36

Section 36 of the Succession Law 1965 gives a testator three routes to revoke a will, and they are deliberately flexible.

The first is to make a new will. The second is an express revocation, a document that says, in one of the four valid will forms, that the earlier will is cancelled. The third is physical destruction: tearing, burning, or erasing the will. Where the testator destroys their own will, the law presumes they intended to revoke it.

Two features of Section 36 matter especially for non-residents.

You do not have to revoke a will in the same form you made it. A will made before a notary can be revoked by a simple handwritten document, and vice versa. The forms are interchangeable for revocation purposes.

And revocation can be partial without anyone intending it. Under Section 36(b), where a later will contradicts an earlier one without expressly revoking it, the earlier will falls away only to the extent of the contradiction. Anything the new will leaves unaddressed can survive in the old one. That is how a person ends up with two wills, both partly valid, pulling in different directions at probate.

In Practice: Under Section 36 of the Succession Law 1965, the cleanest update from abroad is a fresh will before two witnesses under Section 20 that opens with an express clause revoking all prior Israeli wills. Executing it can be done in a single afternoon wherever the testator lives. The friction is downstream: if the will is in English, Israeli probate requires a notarial certified translation into Hebrew under the Notaries Law 1976, which a licensed notary prepares for a regulated fee of roughly NIS 245 for the first 100 words plus a smaller sum per additional page. When the heirs later apply for a will execution order (tzav kiyum tzava'a) from the Registrar of Inheritance (Rasham HaYerushot), an uncontested application runs about NIS 539 in fees and typically takes three to four months. Building the translation and witnessing correctly into the new will now prevents weeks of correction later.

The Deposited Will Problem

Many Israeli wills are deposited for safekeeping with the Registrar of Inheritance. This is a sensible precaution, but it creates a specific hazard when you later update the will from abroad.

Under Section 21 of the Succession Law 1965, a testator may deposit a will with the Registrar. The deposited copy stays on file. Crucially, making a newer will somewhere else does not remove or cancel the deposited one. The registry does not know your intentions; it only knows what is on deposit.

So picture the sequence. You deposit an Israeli will in 2015. In 2026, living abroad, you sign a new will before witnesses that leaves your Tel Aviv apartment to a different beneficiary. You never touch the 2015 deposit. On your death, your heirs apply for probate, and the Registrar's search of the deposit register turns up the 2015 will. Now two wills are in play, and the executor has to prove which governs. The later will should prevail under Section 36, but proving that, from abroad, with a deposited official document contradicting it, adds delay and legal cost at exactly the moment your family can least absorb it.

In Practice: Under Section 21 of the Succession Law 1965, withdrawing a deposited will or depositing a replacement is done through the Registrar of Inheritance (Rasham HaYerushot) at the Ministry of Justice, and the deposit fee is approximately NIS 116. A non-resident cannot simply email the registry to swap the documents; the testator must act in person or through an attorney holding a notarised, apostilled power of attorney. Arranging that power of attorney and completing the deposit change from abroad realistically takes four to eight weeks. The alternative, leaving the old will on deposit and relying on the new will to override it at probate, saves effort now but transfers the problem, and the cost, to your heirs.

This is why updating an Israeli will is not finished when the new will is signed. If the old will was deposited, the deposit needs to be reconciled with reality, either by withdrawing the old will or depositing the new one alongside a clear revocation.

The Foreign Will That Cancels Your Israeli Will

Here is the trap that catches the most people, and it has nothing to do with deposits.

A non-resident with assets in two countries often holds two wills: one covering home-country assets, one covering Israeli assets. This is good planning, and our guide on keeping a separate Israeli will for non-residents explains why. The danger appears when one of those wills is later updated by a lawyer who does not know about the other.

Standard will templates in the US, the UK, Canada, and elsewhere open with a clause revoking "all former wills and testamentary dispositions." When a home-country solicitor redrafts the foreign will and includes that boilerplate, the clause, read literally, revokes the Israeli will too. The Israeli assets the separate will was supposed to protect now fall to be administered under the foreign will, or by intestacy if the foreign will does not mention them. Everything the dual-will structure was built to avoid, the cross-border probate friction covered in our guide to the validity of foreign wills in Israel, comes flooding back.

The fix is in the drafting. Each will should be confined to the assets of its own jurisdiction, and the revocation clause narrowed accordingly: "I revoke all prior wills and codicils insofar as they relate to my assets situated in Israel," and the mirror image in the foreign will. Whenever either will is updated, the lawyer redrafting it must be told the other exists, so the revocation language stays contained.

Special Case: Mutual Wills Between Spouses

If your Israeli will is a mutual will made jointly with your spouse, revocation is not free. Under Section 8A of the Succession Law 1965, mutual wills, in which spouses leave their estates to each other or to agreed beneficiaries in reliance on one another, carry restrictions on unilateral change. While both spouses are alive, one who wants to revoke must give written notice to the other, and that notice cancels both wills. After one spouse has died, the survivor can generally only revoke by renouncing what they inherited under the joint arrangement. A non-resident widow or widower who assumes they can quietly rewrite a mutual will is often wrong, and should take advice before acting.

What Frequently Goes Wrong

Common Mistake: A non-resident updates their home-country will through a local lawyer who inserts a routine clause revoking all prior wills, not knowing a separate Israeli will exists. The clause silently revokes the Israeli will. On death, the Israeli apartment that the Israeli will left cleanly to the children now has no valid will governing it, so it passes by intestate succession under Section 10 of the Succession Law 1965, which may split it differently than intended and forces the heirs to obtain a succession order (tzav yerusha) instead of the simpler will execution order. The added probate complexity routinely costs the estate several thousand shekels in extra legal fees and adds months to the distribution of the Israeli assets. The protection is simple and must happen at drafting time: confine every will to its own country's assets and never use an unrestricted global revocation clause when more than one will exists.

Practical Checklist

• Decide whether you are amending (a codicil or fresh partial will) or fully replacing the old will, and draft the revocation clause to match exactly that intent
• Use a will before two witnesses under Section 20 as the default form when updating from abroad, or a will before an authority via an Israeli consul for maximum durability
• Check whether the existing will was deposited with the Registrar of Inheritance, and if so, withdraw it or deposit the replacement so the registry matches your true final will
• Confine each will to the assets of its own jurisdiction and never let a foreign will use an unrestricted "revoke all prior wills" clause
• Tell any lawyer redrafting your home-country will that a separate Israeli will exists, every time
• If your Israeli will is a mutual will with your spouse, take advice before revoking, because Section 8A limits unilateral changes
• Plan for Hebrew translation now: a foreign-language will needs a notarial certified translation for Israeli probate
• Grant an Israeli attorney a notarised, apostilled power of attorney if registry steps need to be done in Israel on your behalf

Speak With an Israeli Attorney

Changing an Israeli will from abroad is straightforward in principle and easy to botch in the details, especially where a deposited copy or a second will in another country is involved. A short review of your existing Israeli will, your home-country will, and how the two interact will show whether your latest wishes are actually the ones that would take effect. The time to find a conflict is now, not when your family is at the Registrar's office.

Contact us for a confidential initial consultation.