The Family Court in Rishon LeZion recently upheld a will left by a father who bequeathed just 1,000 shekels to a convict son, leaving most of his estate to his five other children and his son-in-law.
Judge Mirit Polous dismissed the son’s request to revoke the probate order, ruling that it had been filed after an unreasonable delay.
The probate order was issued in January 2022, but only in July 2024 did the son, a former inmate, turn to the registrar of inheritance affairs seeking to have it revoked. The case later reached the court, where the son claimed he only learned in September 2023 from his lawyer that a will existed and that his share of the estate was unclear.
According to the son, after being advised to consult another lawyer specializing in inheritance law, he left the office in anger without reviewing the will. He claimed that only later was he exposed to its allegedly discriminatory content, prompting him to file the request with the court.
Before the court, he argued that the will was tainted by undue influence, manipulation, fraud, deception and forgery, and that the probate order should therefore be canceled. He said he possessed a recording proving the will was forged and submitted a transcript of it to the court.
His siblings and brother-in-law countered that the request should be rejected due to the significant delay in filing it. They leveled harsh accusations against him, saying he had been a burden on his parents, failed to help them and, moreover, left their home together with their caregiver and moved to live with her elsewhere. They added that he threatened his father to transfer money to his prison commissary and later did not attend his father’s funeral or shiva because the father refused to register an apartment in his name.
Attorney Libi FriedJudge Polous indeed ruled that the request suffered from a substantial delay of about 10 months, stemming from the son’s own conduct, and that there was therefore no justification for granting his request to revoke the probate order. Regarding the transcript he submitted, she noted that it was not clear whether the recording was lawful or admissible, or when it came into his possession, and in any case, it did not prove forgery. His other claims challenging the validity of the will were also not supported by documents.
“The applicant’s choice not to review the will held by his counsel cannot justify the significant delay in initiating the legal proceeding,” the judge wrote. “This is especially true when the content of the will was known to him, as the applicant himself notes that he heard details from the lawyer, which stirred anger and resentment.”
She concluded that all the relevant facts were known to the disinherited heir, but that he chose to wait a prolonged period before filing the request, “without any reasonable explanation, while citing his temper as justification for inaction. These claims cannot be accepted.”
The ruling clarified that under Israel’s Inheritance Law, a request to revoke a probate order must be filed “at the first reasonable opportunity,” meaning within the timeframe set by regulations for filing an objection to a will — two weeks from the date of publication.
“‘The first reasonable opportunity’ is not an unlimited period for submitting a request to revoke the order,” the judge emphasized. “The period set by the regulations for filing an objection can and should, in my view, serve as a benchmark for the reasonableness of the time frame.”
Accordingly, she ordered the request dismissed and required the son to pay 8,000 shekels in legal costs to the main beneficiaries of the estate.