The Family Court in Be'er Sheva has recently dismissed a lawsuit filed by a woman seeking about NIS 2.5 million, half the value of her former husband’s exit proceeds. Judge Shani Katz ruled that the divorce agreement barred any claim to the proceeds and rejected the argument that the ex-husband concealed the true value of the stock options he held.
The couple had been married for nearly two decades. During the marriage, the husband held a senior position at a company and accumulated options to purchase its shares. In June 2020, the couple signed a divorce agreement in which the woman explicitly waived any rights to her husband’s options.
About a year later, the husband’s company merged with an American firm in a deal worth tens of millions of dollars in cash and shares. According to the ex-wife, she learned of the exit through an article published by TheMarker. At that point, she turned to the court in an attempt to obtain a share of what she described as enormous profits.
She claimed that before signing the divorce agreement, her husband had concealed information about the value of the options and misled her into believing that their value and the likelihood of realization were negligible. She sought to balance the value of the options at the time of their realization, so that the exit proceeds, amounting to NIS 4.76 million, would be divided between them.
The ex-husband argued that his former wife had expressly waived any future claims regarding the options. He maintained that the assets were accrued after the marital breakdown and therefore were not subject to the balancing of resources. He further accused her of vindictiveness, greed and bad faith.
Judge Katz agreed. “The plaintiff’s attempt to have it both ways, on the one hand leaving the divorce agreement intact and on the other reopening only one of its components, the options, despite an explicit waiver, is improper and inconsistent with established case law,” she wrote.
Beyond what was strictly necessary, the judge also rejected the woman’s claim that her ex-husband had concealed information about the value of the options at the time of separation. She found that during that period the company was unstable and lacked any profitable outlook, and that the woman’s attempt “to retroactively infer from the company’s later success to the issue of disclosure is nothing more than hindsight.”
The ruling noted that the husband, who was not deeply involved in the company’s financial details, genuinely believed that the options he held had no real value. As such, he did not present his then wife and now ex-wife with any false representation regarding their worth. “I am convinced that the defendant did not conceal information, certainly not material information, but rather provided all the information required in order to assess the value of the options,” the judge wrote.
Under these circumstances, the court ordered the full dismissal of the lawsuit and required the woman to pay NIS 45,000 in legal costs to her former husband.