Revoking or Changing an Israeli Will: A Complete Guide

Most people who write an Israeli will never think about what happens when life changes. A second marriage, an estrangement, a property sold and replaced, children born after the will was drafted — any of these can make an existing will outdated, incomplete, or even legally contradictory. For foreign nationals who hold Israeli property or assets, the question becomes even more pressing: if you wrote an Israeli will during an Aliyah application in 2019 and your circumstances are now completely different, what does it take to cancel or change it without flying to Tel Aviv?

The answer is less complicated than people expect, but getting it wrong can leave an old will in force longer than intended. Israeli law gives testators wide freedom to revoke and remake their wills, and it even automates revocation in certain life events. Where things go wrong is when testators assume that a newer will made in another country automatically cancels the old Israeli one, or that destroying one copy of a two-copy will is enough. The sections below cover each revocation method, the life events that trigger automatic partial revocation, and practical steps for non-residents who need to update an Israeli will from abroad.

1. Overview: Israeli Law Gives Testators Full Revocation Freedom

The primary statute governing Israeli wills is the Succession Law 1965 (*Hok ha-Yerusha*, 5725-1965). Sections 36 through 40 deal specifically with revocation. The legislature's approach was deliberately permissive: a testator can revoke a will at any point in their life, for any reason, without needing to explain the decision to a court, a beneficiary, or anyone else.

Israeli legal doctrine has a name for this: testamentary autonomy (*hofesh lehatzavot*). The law treats your will as an expression of your current wishes, not a binding contract with your intended beneficiaries. Until the moment you die, you retain complete control over who receives what.

One caveat: a revocation is only legally effective if it follows one of the four methods prescribed by the Succession Law. An oral statement ("I've changed my mind, I'm leaving everything to my daughter now") does not revoke a written will. A letter to your children saying the old will no longer reflects your wishes does not legally revoke it. The formality requirements that exist for making a will also apply, broadly, to revoking one.

2. The Four Legal Methods of Revoking an Israeli Will

Section 36 of the Succession Law 1965 sets out the recognized ways to revoke a will:

Method 1: Execute a New Will

The most common and cleanest method. A new will that expressly states "I hereby revoke all prior wills and codicils" eliminates any ambiguity about whether earlier documents remain in force. If the new will does not include explicit revocation language, Israeli courts apply an implied revocation rule: the later will overrides the earlier one only to the extent the two conflict. Where they do not conflict, both documents technically remain partially valid — which is exactly the situation that leads to contested estate proceedings.

Best practice: any new Israeli will should open with a clear statement along the lines of: "I, [name], revoke all previous wills and declarations of intent that I have made, and declare this to be my only current will."

Method 2: Physical Destruction of the Will

A testator who wants to revoke a handwritten will (*tzavaah bichtav yad*) can destroy it physically — tearing, burning, or otherwise making it unreadable — with the clear intention to revoke. The intention to revoke is critical: accidentally losing or damaging a will is not a revocation. If the testator made more than one copy of a handwritten will, destroying one copy while leaving the other intact is legally ambiguous, and courts have considered both outcomes in such cases. For witnessed wills (*tzavaah befaney edim*), all executed copies should be destroyed.

Method 3: Formal Revocation Declaration Before a Notary

The testator appears before an Israeli notary (*notar*) and signs a formal declaration that the will is revoked. This method is particularly useful when the original will cannot be physically located — perhaps it is held by an attorney in Israel and the testator is now living abroad. The revocation declaration must be signed before a notary in Israel, or before a local notary abroad if the declaration is then apostilled and submitted to Israel. A standard notarial fee in Israel for this type of declaration ranges from approximately NIS 600 to NIS 1,200, depending on complexity.

Method 4: Revocation by Operation of Law

Certain legal events automatically revoke part of a will without any action by the testator. These are covered in more detail in the next section.

3. Automatic Revocation: What Life Events Cancel Part of Your Will

Israeli law recognizes several life events that trigger automatic, partial revocation without any act by the testator.

Divorce and the Section 39 Rule

Under Section 39 of the Succession Law 1965, when a testator gets divorced, all provisions in the will that were made in favor of the former spouse are automatically voided the moment the divorce becomes final. This happens regardless of whether the testator knows about the rule, does anything about the will, or even intends to change it. The rest of the will — provisions for children, other family members, or charities — remains fully valid.

In practice, this automatic partial revocation is frequently misunderstood. Divorced testators sometimes believe their will was completely voided by the divorce. It was not — only the ex-spouse's share disappeared. The remainder of the estate will still pass according to the will, potentially in ways that no longer reflect the testator's post-divorce wishes (for example, assets might now pass to children in shares that were originally designed with the ex-spouse's share factored in).

The practical recommendation is always to rewrite the will in full after a divorce, not to rely on Section 39's partial automatic revocation.

Oral Wills and Changed Circumstances (Section 38)

An oral will (*tzavaah befeh*) is valid only when made under specific emergency circumstances — typically when death is imminent and there is no time to execute a written will. Under Section 38 of the Succession Law 1965, an oral will is automatically revoked if more than one month passes after the circumstances that justified it have changed. If someone made an oral will during a hospital emergency, recovered, and then lived for another three years, that oral will ceased to be valid long before their death.

What Marriage Does NOT Do

One important distinction from the law of England and Wales: in Israel, marriage does not automatically revoke an existing will. If you wrote a will naming your children as sole beneficiaries, married a second spouse, and never updated the will, that document remains valid. Your new spouse does, however, have statutory protections under the Succession Law regardless of what your will says — but the will itself is not voided by the marriage.

4. Making a New Israeli Will: Does It Replace the Old One?

The safest way to revoke an Israeli will is to execute a new one that expressly says it revokes all prior wills. When a client comes to our office wanting to change an Israeli will, this is almost always the approach we recommend: a clean new document that supersedes everything that came before it, rather than a piecemeal amendment or a partial revocation notice.

The interaction between an old and new will gets complicated in a few cases:

The Foreign Will Problem

Many foreign nationals with Israeli assets already have a will in their home country — a US, UK, French, or Australian will. They may assume that updating or rewriting that foreign will is sufficient to deal with Israeli assets. It generally is not, for two reasons.

First, Israeli courts require an Israeli legal process to transfer Israeli assets. A foreign will must go through either probate in Israel or a recognition procedure to be treated as valid domestically. Until that recognition process is completed, the earlier Israeli will (if one exists and has not been expressly revoked) may be the document that governs the distribution of Israeli assets.

Second, even if the newer foreign will contains a revocation clause ("I revoke all prior wills"), this clause may not be interpreted by an Israeli court as having revoked an earlier Israeli will unless the foreign will can be shown to be valid in Israel under Section 111 of the Succession Law 1965 — which permits foreign wills to be valid in Israel if they meet the formal requirements of either Israeli law or the law of the country where they were made.

The safest approach for a foreign national who has changed their testamentary wishes: execute a new Israeli will that expressly revokes all prior wills, including any made in other countries as they relate to Israeli assets.

Conflicting Provisions When No Explicit Revocation

If the new will is silent on the question of prior wills, Israeli courts will try to harmonize the two documents where possible. Where they cannot be harmonized, later provisions take precedence. But this creates a situation where the estate's beneficiaries may not know which document governs which asset, leading to uncertainty and potentially litigation at the Registrar of Inheritance Affairs.

5. Partial Amendments: Changing One Provision Without Revoking Everything

Sometimes a testator wants to change only one specific thing — substituting a new beneficiary for one who has died, updating the share of a child who was born after the will was made, or removing a bequest to a charity that no longer exists. For these situations, Israeli law allows a partial revocation and amendment, sometimes called a codicil.

Israeli law does not use the term "codicil" explicitly, but the mechanism exists: a testator can execute a supplemental document that modifies identified provisions while expressly leaving the rest of the will unchanged. This supplemental document must meet exactly the same formal requirements as the original will. For a handwritten will (*tzavaah bichtav yad* under Section 19 of the Succession Law), the supplement must be entirely handwritten and signed by the testator. For a witnessed will (*tzavaah befaney edim* under Section 20), the supplement must be signed before two witnesses who are not beneficiaries of the will.

Every partial amendment adds to a chain of documents that must all be located and read together when the estate is administered. Two or three amendments over the years can make estate administration significantly more complicated. If the changes you want are substantial, a clean new will is almost always preferable to accumulating codicils.

6. Practical Steps for Non-Residents Who Need to Update Their Israeli Will

Foreign nationals face two practical problems Israeli residents do not: how to execute or revoke a will without traveling to Israel, and how a will drafted under a different legal system interacts with Israeli estate administration.

Step 1: Locate the Existing Will and Confirm Its Status

If you registered the original will with the Registrar of Inheritance Affairs, you can request confirmation of registration online through the Ministry of Justice portal (gov.il). The Registrar can confirm whether your will is on file and whether any revocation notices have been previously submitted. The fee for a will status inquiry is approximately NIS 80 as of 2026. If the will was not registered and is held by an Israeli attorney, contact that attorney directly.

Step 2: Decide Whether to Fully Revoke or Partially Amend

If the changes you need are minor — updating one beneficiary, adjusting shares — a partial amendment may be sufficient. If your circumstances have changed significantly (remarriage, significant new assets, family estrangements, new children), a clean new will is the more reliable path. Your Israeli attorney will advise which approach suits your situation.

Step 3: Retain a Licensed Israeli Attorney

Wills and revocations involving non-residents require a licensed Israeli attorney (*adv.*) who is familiar with cross-border estate matters. The Israeli Bar Association maintains a public directory of licensed practitioners. Look for attorneys who specifically handle inheritance and probate for non-residents, as the procedural requirements for remote execution and apostille differ from domestic matters.

Step 4: Execute the Document in Your Home Country

For a revocation declaration or a new will that will be submitted to Israeli authorities, you will sign the document before a local notary in your home country. The local notary's seal authenticates your signature. The document is then apostilled by the competent authority in your country (in the US, this is typically the Secretary of State of the relevant state; in the UK, the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office). The apostille certifies that the document is authentic for use in another Hague Convention country, including Israel.

Step 5: Submit to the Registrar Through Your Israeli Attorney

Your Israeli attorney files the apostilled revocation or new will with the Registrar of Inheritance Affairs. The Registrar's online portal accepts digital submissions for most routine will transactions. Your attorney will coordinate the filing and provide you with confirmation once the document is processed.

Step 6: Keep All Original Documents Safely

Retain the original apostilled document, any confirmation from the Registrar, and all prior wills (even revoked ones) in a secure location. When your estate is eventually administered, the Registrar will want to see the full chain of documents to confirm which will was in force at the time of death. Destroying original documents, even ones that have been revoked, can complicate estate administration.

7. If All Wills Are Revoked: Falling Back to Intestate Succession

Revoking a will without immediately replacing it means your Israeli assets will pass under the intestate succession rules of Sections 10–14 of the Succession Law 1965. These default rules distribute assets as follows:

• Spouse and children: The surviving spouse receives all movable household assets plus half of the remaining estate. The other half is split equally among the children.
• Children only (no spouse): The estate is divided equally among all children.
• Spouse only (no children): The spouse inherits the entire estate.
• No spouse or children: The estate passes to parents, then to siblings, then to grandparents, and ultimately — if no family members are found — to the State of Israel.

For many people, these default rules produce a reasonable outcome. But there are several situations where relying on intestate succession creates real problems for foreign nationals:

Non-recognized spousal relationships. Israeli law recognizes spouses through marriage registered in Israel or through a foreign marriage that is recognized by the Ministry of Interior. Common-law spouses and partners in unregistered unions may not be treated as a "spouse" under the intestate rules, even after many years together. A valid Israeli will is the only reliable way to ensure an unregistered partner inherits Israeli assets.

Step-children and adopted children. Under the intestate rules, the term "children" covers biological and legally adopted children, but not step-children. If your will names a step-child as a beneficiary and you revoke that will without replacing it, the step-child will inherit nothing under intestate succession.

Family businesses and specific assets. Intestate succession distributes assets in equal fractions, which can force the sale of indivisible assets like an apartment or a business stake. A carefully drafted will can preserve specific assets for specific heirs — something the default rules cannot do.