My Israeli lawyer has died and he was holding my file and my money. What happens now?

Emails start bouncing, the office number rings out, and a search eventually turns up a death notice. For a client sitting in another country with a succession file half finished and a deposit sitting in the lawyer's trust account, the instinct is to contact the family. That is the wrong door. Israeli law hands the problem to the Bar Association and the District Court, and the family has no authority over the professional files at all.

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Detailed Answer

Section 89A of the Bar Association Law 5721-1961 covers the situation directly. Where an advocate has died, retired from the Bar, had membership cancelled, suspended or expired, or is otherwise unable to perform their duties, and proper handling of the clients' affairs has not been assured, the District Committee of the Bar may apply to the District Court to appoint a member of the district as appointee (memuneh) over that advocate's professional affairs. The appointee is not a caretaker of a business. The role is to deal with the clients' matters, including matters already paid for, to hand back files and documents to any client who instructs someone else, and to close and store dormant files in accordance with the Bar's storage rules made in 1971. Candidates for the role are expected to have practised for at least three years, to be free of criminal or disciplinary convictions, and to sign a written undertaking. In practice the committee prefers to appoint an appointee over all of a lawyer's professional affairs rather than file by file, particularly once several clients have come forward.

Money is a separate question from paper, and it is worth keeping the two apart. Funds a lawyer holds for a client are held for the client, so they do not become part of the deceased advocate's estate and the heirs cannot deal with them as an inheritance. The Inheritance Registrar has taken exactly that position where heirs tried to install their own choice of person over a deceased advocate's files and trust money. What happens in practice is that the appointee reconstructs the trust ledger against the client files, and where the accounting is incomplete or the account has been frozen by the bank on notice of the death, releasing a specific client's money can require an application supported by the retainer, the payment records and the appointee's confirmation. Budget for that taking materially longer than the return of the paper file.

Everything is harder from abroad for the ordinary reason that nobody has your address. The Bar's district committee writes to clients using whatever contact details the practice held, and a foreign client whose file was opened years ago is often not written to at all. Write to the district committee of the district where the practice was registered, identify yourself and the matter, ask whether an appointee has been sought under Section 89A, and ask to be recorded as a client. Do it in Hebrew or through an Israeli lawyer, because a letter in English to a district committee tends to sit. Check separately whether the deceased lawyer held a power of attorney for you or was your address for service in a live court file, because both need replacing before a deadline runs. Where the file is live and you are simply changing representation, the rules on transferring the file and any retaining lien over it are set out in our answer on changing an Israeli lawyer mid case.

In Practice: Under Section 89A of the Bar Association Law 5721-1961, only the District Committee of the Israel Bar Association may apply to the District Court for the appointment of an appointee (memuneh) over a deceased advocate's professional affairs, and the appointee must be an advocate with at least three years of practice. Appointment commonly takes 6 to 12 weeks from the committee's application, and retrieval of a specific client file after that runs a further 2 to 6 weeks. Trust money is slower: reconstructing the ledger and releasing an identified client's deposit of, say, NIS 100,000 frequently takes 3 to 9 months, and where the bank has frozen the account on notice of death a court application is needed. Israeli advocates carry compulsory professional indemnity insurance, which is the route where money cannot be traced rather than merely delayed.

When to Consult a Lawyer

• The deceased lawyer held money of yours in trust, since tracing and releasing it runs on a different and much slower track than getting the paper file back, and the professional indemnity insurer may need to be notified early.
• You have a live Israeli court file, an objection window or a tax deadline running, because a dead advocate's address for service does not stop time and a substitution notice has to be filed.
• The lawyer's family has offered to hand over your documents directly, which sounds helpful and is not the proper route, and accepting a partial file that way tends to destroy any later argument about what was missing.

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Speak With an Israeli Attorney

We contact the relevant district committee, get you recorded as a client of the appointed memuneh, recover the file and any trust balance, and take over any live Israeli deadline before it passes.

Contact us for a confidential initial consultation.