The Tel Aviv District Court recently upheld a will left by an elderly childless woman in which she bequeathed her Tel Aviv apartment to an acquaintance.
Judges Einat Ravid, who headed the panel, Naftali Shilo and Yehezkel Eliyahu rejected claims that the beneficiary had been involved in drafting the document, relying in part on cellphone location data showing he was not at the woman’s home when the will was signed.
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It was the second will the woman had drawn up. In the first, from 2011, she left the apartment in equal shares to the acquaintance and her cousin. The second will, drafted in April 2014, left the property solely to the acquaintance, along with her car and other assets. About two years later, the woman died at age 81, leaving no spouse or children.
In February 2023, the Family Court rejected the cousin’s objection to the will. It found no basis for her claim that the deceased had lacked legal capacity or that the acquaintance had exerted undue influence over her. The court also rejected claims that he had been involved in drafting the will after cellphone location records showed that although he had been in the general Tel Aviv area, he had not been at the woman’s home.
The cousin refused to accept the ruling and appealed. She challenged the findings regarding the deceased’s mental capacity and the conclusion that she had not been subjected to influence or pressure by the acquaintance. According to the cousin, he had “taken control of her life and property, exploited her weakness and was intensely involved in her life, including in the drafting of the will.”
The acquaintance, however, insisted that he had not been at the deceased’s apartment when the will was signed, as indicated by the attorney’s testimony, cellphone location data and a review of Google Timeline. He argued that the court had therefore been correct to reject claims of his involvement and order that the will be carried out.
The District Court judges agreed there was no basis to intervene in the Family Court ruling. They noted that two court-appointed experts had found that the woman was mentally competent before signing the will and that there was no justification for departing from their opinions. They likewise found no error in the lower court’s handling of the question of the acquaintance’s involvement in preparing the document.
“This issue was thoroughly examined by the lower court, and the respondent’s cellphone was also located through an expert, who determined that he was not present at the apartment where the will was drawn up at the relevant time,” Ravid wrote in the ruling.
Attorney Dovrat Lubel Sharon Photo: Shirad NissimShe noted that the expert found the acquaintance had arrived in Israel on a flight from Paris on the day the will was written and had traveled to Tel Aviv. However, according to the findings, he was not at the deceased’s home.
“The information unequivocally shows that the subscriber was not recorded at the address,” the expert concluded.
Ravid said the opinion was clear and unequivocal and there was no reason to depart from it. Combined with the notary’s testimony, she said, it was sufficient to conclude that the acquaintance had not been involved in preparing the will at issue in the case.
The notary testified that on the day the will was signed, the deceased “was alone in the apartment, and she opened the door for him herself.” The Family Court found his testimony credible, and Ravid concluded that there was not even preliminary evidence supporting the cousin’s claim that the acquaintance had been involved in the will, including that he had been present at the apartment on the day it was signed.
The result: The appeal was dismissed, and the cousin was ordered to pay 50,000 shekels in legal costs to the acquaintance.