Quick Answer: When a person dies owning assets in Israel, the country whose inheritance law decides who inherits is usually not Israel. It is the country where the deceased was domiciled (where the centre of their life was) at the moment of death, under Section 137 of Israel's Succession Law 5725-1965. Israeli courts still have jurisdiction over the Israeli assets and must issue the order that releases them, but they will frequently apply foreign inheritance rules to decide who the heirs are and what each receives. Real estate located in Israel and agricultural land follow their own special rules.

A stressful surprise waits for many foreign families: owning assets in Israel and inheriting under Israeli law are two different things. An American who dies in Florida owning a Tel Aviv apartment. A British citizen living in London with an Israeli bank account. A French national who kept property in Paris after making aliyah. Every one of these estates raises the same threshold question before anybody can be confirmed as an heir. Which country's inheritance law actually governs?

The answer changes who inherits and how much. Countries divide estates in strikingly different ways. England gives a surviving spouse a large fixed sum and splits the remainder with the children. France reserves mandatory shares for children that a will cannot cut out. Israel's own intestacy rules hand the spouse half and the children the other half. Choose the wrong governing law and you can name the wrong heirs, distribute the wrong shares, and leave the whole succession order open to challenge years later. This guide walks through how Israeli law selects the governing law, and what that choice means in practice for a foreign family.

1. Overview

Cross-border estates raise two separate questions that people tend to blur together. The first is jurisdiction: which country's authorities are entitled to open the file and issue orders? The second is the applicable, or governing, law: whose substantive inheritance rules decide the identity of the heirs and the size of their shares? These are not the same question, and the answers frequently point to different countries. A single Israeli estate can sit in front of an Israeli authority that is applying English, American, or French inheritance law.

Israel's rules on this subject live in Chapter Seven of the Succession Law 5725-1965 (Sections 136 to 142), the part of the statute dealing with private international law. The cornerstone is the connecting factor chosen in Section 137: the law of the place where the deceased was domiciled at the time of death. Everything else in this guide is either a refinement of that rule or an exception to it.

2. When Israeli Authorities Have Jurisdiction

Section 136 sets the reach of the Israeli system. An Israeli court and the Registrar of Inheritance Affairs (הרשם לענייני ירושה) have jurisdiction over the estate of a person who, at the time of death, either was domiciled in Israel or left assets in Israel. The second limb is the one that pulls in most foreign families. A relative who lived and died abroad but held a Bank Leumi account, a Netanya apartment, or shares in an Israeli company has "left assets in Israel," so Israeli jurisdiction attaches to those assets.

Jurisdiction is what you need before anything can move. Israeli banks will not release a balance, the Land Registry (Tabu) will not re-register an apartment, and the Companies Registrar will not record a share transfer, unless they are handed an Israeli succession order (tzav yerusha) where there is no will, or an Israeli probate order (tzav kiyum tzava'ah) where there is one. A grant of probate obtained in New York or London, however valid at home, does not by itself instruct an Israeli institution to act.

In Practice — Filing With the Registrar of Inheritance Affairs: Applications for a succession order or probate order are filed with the Registrar of Inheritance Affairs (part of the Ministry of Justice), in the district matching the deceased's last Israeli residence or, for a foreign resident, where the assets are located. The official fee is roughly NIS 550 for the application plus a mandatory publication of about NIS 130 in a daily newspaper and the official gazette (2026 rates; confirm the current figures with the Registrar). Once filed, the application is published and referred to the Administrator General (האפוטרופוס הכללי, the Apotropus Klali), who has 45 days to notify whether the State intends to intervene, for example where a minor, a protected adult, or an untraceable heir is involved. An uncontested order with no foreign-law question is typically issued within three to six months. Add a foreign-law element and the file usually moves to the Family Court, extending the timeline.

3. The General Rule: The Deceased's Domicile

Section 137 provides the default answer to the governing-law question: succession is regulated by the law of the deceased's domicile at the time of death. The Hebrew term is makom moshav (מקום מושב), and it does not mean citizenship, it does not mean where the person happened to die, and it does not mean where the property sits. It means the place that was the centre of the person's life when they died: where they kept their home, where their family was based, where they worked, and where their main social and economic ties lay.

The distinction catches people out. A dual Israeli-British national who spent the last thirty years in Manchester is domiciled in England for these purposes, so English succession rules decide the heirs to their estate, including the movable assets they held in Israel, even though they carried an Israeli passport. Conversely, a person who moved their whole life to Israel is domiciled in Israel, and Israeli law governs their worldwide succession, whatever passport they held.

One technical wrinkle deserves a flag. If the foreign domicile's own conflict-of-laws rules point back to Israeli law (because that country applies the law of nationality, or refers real property to the country where it is located), an Israeli court may accept the reference and apply Israeli law after all. This "renvoi" question is one of the reasons a genuinely cross-border estate belongs with a practitioner who handles them regularly rather than with a general form-filling service.

In Practice — Proving Where the Deceased Was Domiciled: Because domicile drives the whole result under Section 137, the Registrar and the Family Court want evidence of it, not assertions. Useful documentation includes the deceased's registration (or absence of registration) with the Israeli Population and Immigration Authority (Rashut HaOchlusin VeHagira) at the Ministry of Interior, a foreign certificate of residence or tax residence, records of the main home, and evidence of where the family lived and where economic activity was centred. Where domicile is genuinely arguable, such as a "snowbird" who split the year between Florida and Herzliya, expect the Registrar to transfer the file to the Family Court for a judicial finding, which can add several months. Settling domicile early, with clean documents, is the single most effective way to keep a cross-border file moving.

4. Israeli Real Estate and Special Property

Here sits the most misunderstood point in the whole subject. A common shorthand says that movable assets follow the deceased's domicile while Israeli real estate is always governed by Israeli law. That is a useful rule of thumb, but it is an oversimplification of what the statute actually says, and treating it as a certainty has cost families dearly.

Section 137, read on its own, applies domicile law to the entire estate, movable and immovable alike. The exception comes from Section 138, which carves out property that, under the law of the place where it is located, is subject to a special succession regime, one where the law of the situs claims exclusive competence over how that particular property passes. For a great deal of ordinary Israeli real estate, whether that exception bites is genuinely debated among Israeli scholars and practitioners. Some courts and many practising lawyers apply Israeli law to Israeli immovables on a situs basis; the academic position is more cautious and asks whether Israeli law truly imposes a special regime on the specific asset. The safe conclusion for a foreign owner is not to assume either way, but to get the point analysed for the specific property before an order is drafted.

Where Section 138 clearly does apply is agricultural land, and that catches many diaspora families who inherited a share in a family nachala.

In Practice — Moshav Land and the Single-Successor Rule: Where an Israeli estate includes an agricultural holding (nachala) on a moshav or kibbutz, Section 114 of the Succession Law overrides the ordinary division rules. To stop farms being split into unworkable fragments, the holding passes to a single heir able to maintain it, who then compensates the other heirs for their shares. On top of the statute, the lease terms of the Israel Land Authority (Rashut Mekarke'i Yisrael) and the rules of the settlement movement govern who may take over the holding, often through a designated successor known as a ben mamshich. This is a genuine situs-based special regime under Section 138, so Israeli law applies to the holding regardless of where the deceased was domiciled. Foreign heirs expecting an equal cash split of a family farm are frequently surprised, and these files commonly run past a year once the Land Authority and the settlement are involved.

5. Foreign Wills: Form and Capacity

A separate set of rules decides whether a will made abroad is recognised in Israel, quite apart from which law governs the distribution. This matters because a foreign will rarely follows Israeli witnessing formalities, and families worry that it will be thrown out for that reason. Usually it is not.

Section 140 is a deliberately generous "validating" rule on the form of a will. A will is treated as formally valid in Israel if it satisfies the formal requirements of any one of several connected laws: the law of the place where it was made, or the law of the deceased's domicile, habitual residence, or nationality, measured either when the will was signed or at death. A will executed correctly under New York or English formalities therefore clears the Israeli formal-validity bar even though it was signed with two witnesses rather than in one of the four Israeli forms. Capacity to make the will (age and mental competence) is judged under the law connected to the testator at the time of signing, addressed in the same chapter of the statute.

Recognition of form is not the end of the process. The foreign will still has to be admitted to probate in Israel to produce a tzav kiyum tzava'ah, and that requires the underlying documents in a form Israeli authorities accept.

In Practice — Documents to Probate a Foreign Will: To probate a foreign will under Section 140, the Registrar of Inheritance Affairs expects: the original will (or a certified copy where the original is lodged with a foreign court or registry); an official death certificate; an apostille certificate under the 1961 Hague Convention on each foreign public document, obtained from the competent authority in the country of origin; and a certified Hebrew translation, notarised by an Israeli notary. If the deceased was domiciled abroad, a foreign-law opinion is usually required as well (see the next section). Getting the apostilles and notarised translations right the first time saves the most time. A missing apostille or an uncertified translation is the most common reason a foreign-will file is bounced back, adding weeks to a process that already runs several months.

6. Proving Foreign Law in Israel

When Section 137 sends the succession to a foreign law, that law does not simply announce itself to the Israeli authority. Israeli courts do not take judicial notice of foreign law. Foreign law is treated as a question of fact that has to be proved by expert evidence, and until it is proved, the Israeli file cannot conclude who the heirs are.

The vehicle is a foreign-law opinion (חוות דעת דין זר): a written, sworn opinion from a lawyer or recognised expert qualified in the relevant foreign system, setting out who inherits under that law and in what shares, and attaching the relevant statutory text. Because assessing foreign law is a judicial function, the Registrar of Inheritance Affairs will generally decline to determine it and will transfer the file to the Family Court (Beit HaMishpat LeInyanei Mishpacha), which hears the expert evidence and issues the order.

In Practice — Commissioning the Foreign-Law Opinion: Budget for the opinion early. A foreign-law opinion typically costs between NIS 3,000 and NIS 15,000, depending on the country, the complexity of the family tree, and whether the two sides dispute the foreign rules. Commissioning it, translating it, and having the Family Court accept it usually adds one to three months on top of the standard order timeline. Where the heirs disagree, for example when one branch argues the deceased was domiciled in a forced-heirship country and another argues for a common-law domicile, the file becomes contested litigation and can run one to two years. The practical lesson is to identify the governing law and line up the expert at the very start, before drafting the application, rather than discovering the requirement halfway through.

7. Worked Scenarios and Planning

Three short scenarios show how the rules combine.

  • American domiciled in Florida, owns a Tel Aviv apartment. Israel has jurisdiction because the asset is in Israel (Section 136). Under Section 137, Florida law governs the movable estate; the apartment falls into the debated situs question under Section 138. Practically, the family obtains an Israeli order and, because domicile is abroad, files a Florida-law opinion, with the real-estate treatment analysed for that specific property.
  • French national domiciled in Paris with an Israeli investment portfolio. French law governs under Section 137. France's réserve héréditaire reserves fixed shares for the children, so a will that leaves everything to a spouse or a charity may be only partly enforceable against the Israeli movable assets. The reserved shares travel with the domicile law.
  • Foreign citizen who made aliyah and is now domiciled in Israel. Israeli law governs the entire worldwide succession, citizenship notwithstanding. People are often startled to learn that their American or British home-country inheritance expectations do not follow them once their life has genuinely moved to Israel.

The planning takeaways follow directly. Anyone with assets in more than one country should coordinate their wills rather than draft them in isolation. A well-drafted Israeli will limited to Israeli-situs assets speeds up Israeli probate and avoids a foreign-law opinion for those assets, but its revocation clause must be worded so it does not accidentally cancel the foreign will, and vice versa. Where the deceased may be domiciled in a forced-heirship country, plan around the reserved shares instead of pretending a will can defeat them. And where domicile itself is arguable, build the documentary record of where life is centred while the person is alive, because that record is far harder to assemble after death.

In Practice — Coordinating an Israeli Will With a Foreign One: The cleanest structure for a foreign national with Israeli assets is a short, standalone Israeli will covering only the Israeli-situs property, executed to Israeli standards, with an express clause stating that it does not revoke wills dealing with assets outside Israel. The foreign will carries a mirror clause. This lets the Israeli will be probated quickly at the Registrar, without waiting on a foreign-law opinion, while the foreign estate proceeds under its own law. Review both documents together whenever either country's family or asset position changes, and re-confirm domicile if the person relocates. A mid-life move from London to Jerusalem can silently switch the governing law under Section 137 and undo an estate plan that was correct when it was written.