My mother in Israel is struggling but not incapable. Is there something less drastic than guardianship I can arrange from Canada?

The phone calls from Haifa get more confused, bills go unpaid, and the family in Toronto starts using the word guardianship because it is the only word they know. Israeli law has spent a decade building something in between, and since 2024 it is finally a working procedure rather than a principle sitting in a statute waiting for regulations.

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Detailed Answer

Section 67B of the Legal Capacity and Guardianship Law 5722-1962, inserted by Amendment 18 in 2016, allows the court to appoint a supporter in decision-making for an adult who can still form and express a view but needs help understanding information, weighing options and communicating a choice. The supporter has no power to decide anything. They obtain and explain the information, set out the alternatives and their consequences, help the person state the decision to a bank, a doctor or an insurer, and stop there. Section 67B(e) requires the court, when it appoints one, to specify in its decision the matters the supporter will cover and to fix the period of the appointment, so the order is narrow by design rather than open ended. That matters because the court is now expected to look for the least restrictive option first, and a blanket guardianship application over a parent who can still make some decisions tends to be cut down rather than granted.

The Legal Capacity and Guardianship (Supported Decision-Making) Regulations 5784-2024 fill in the machinery that was missing for eight years. A volunteer supporter must complete at least five hours of training and may serve up to five people at a time. A professional supporter must complete at least forty hours of training and hold at least three years of experience with people with disabilities or older adults, and may serve up to twenty. Neither may have a disqualifying criminal record or a conflict of interest with the person supported. The third category is the one most families use: a supporter with a close relationship, a family member or someone with an ongoing personal connection, who can be appointed without the training route. The Administrator General (HaApotropus HaKlali) at the Ministry of Justice keeps the register of volunteer and professional supporters and may suspend or remove a registration, and complaints about a supporter go to the Administrator General's investigator.

For a child in Canada the honest reading is that you are usually the applicant and not the supporter. The regulations require regular contact, with meetings at least monthly, and say nothing about a supporter living abroad. A daughter in Toronto cannot sit with a parent in Haifa every month, and the court will notice. What works is a supporter on the ground, a neighbour, a cousin, a former colleague, appointed on your application with your mother's agreement, while you hold a separate power of attorney for the banking and property side. That combination keeps your mother's legal capacity intact, which full guardianship removes, and it avoids the inventory and annual accounting duties that fall on an appointed guardian. Where capacity has already gone, the supporter route closes and the analysis in our answer on a Canadian child seeking guardianship of an elderly parent in Israel is the one that applies.

In Practice: Section 67B of the Legal Capacity and Guardianship Law 5722-1962 requires the Family Court in the district where the parent lives to define both the subject matter and the duration of a supporter's appointment, and the Supported Decision-Making Regulations 5784-2024, in force since August 2024, set minimum monthly contact and a caseload cap of five people for a volunteer supporter and twenty for a professional one. The register of supporters sits with the Administrator General (HaApotropus HaKlali) at the Ministry of Justice. Contrast the guardianship route, where Section 51 obliges the guardian to file an inventory within 30 days and Section 47 blocks the sale of a parent's NIS 2.5 million apartment without prior approval (since August 2025 sought from the Administrator General under Section 74A, who may refer it to the Family Court). An uncontested application in either track commonly runs three to six months from filing.

When to Consult a Lawyer

• A bank or a kupat holim has already refused to deal with your mother, because the refusal is often about their internal policy rather than her capacity, and a supporter order plus a written protocol usually solves it without any restriction of her rights.
• Siblings disagree about whether a supporter is enough, since a contested application converts a short filing into a full Family Court hearing with a social worker's report.
• The property is the real problem rather than the decisions, in which case an enduring power of attorney signed while capacity remains is a better tool than either route, as set out in our answer on the Israeli enduring power of attorney for non-residents.

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Speak With an Israeli Attorney

We assess whether a supporter appointment under Section 67B will actually solve the problem your family is facing, identify and vet a suitable supporter on the ground in Israel, and run the Family Court application while you stay in Canada.

Contact us for a confidential initial consultation.