Inheritance, Estates & Personal Status
Wills, succession, guardianship and personal status — almost always for families whose assets, members or marriages reach across more than one country.
This practice covers the documents people sign long before they are needed, and the proceedings that follow when they are. The firm drafts wills and enduring powers of attorney, handles succession and estate resolution, and litigates estate and personal status disputes where they arise.
What characterises almost all of it is that more than one country is involved. A parent who made a will abroad and died holding property here. Children living in three countries who must agree on an estate governed by Israeli law. A couple married in one jurisdiction and divorcing in another, where a civil court and a religious court each hold part of the answer. These are the matters the firm is built to take.
Daniel B. Schwartz draws up the firm’s enduring powers of attorney and has handled estate resolution, legal incompetency and guardianship matters throughout his career. Both partners are certified to prepare enduring powers of attorney.
What we handle
Two systems at once
Where the deceased held assets in Israel and abroad, or where beneficiaries live outside Israel, two systems have to be reconciled. The firm handles the Israeli side and coordinates with counsel elsewhere — and, where a court needs to be told what foreign law provides, can give the opinion itself rather than instruct someone else to.
Israeli divorce carries its own version of the problem, since the civil courts and the Rabbinical Courts each hold part of the jurisdiction. For a family whose first language is English and whose life is partly elsewhere, that is rarely obvious from the outside.
Where this becomes contentious
Divorce in Israel runs through the Rabbinical Courts, and a spouse who refuses to grant or accept a get can leave the other unable to remarry for years. The firm has taken that question as far as the High Court of Justice — see the matter described on the litigation page.
How we work
- Clear explanation of what each document does, and what it does not do.
- Drafting that anticipates the dispute rather than assuming goodwill.
- Discretion, in matters that are rarely only legal.
Related practices
This practice runs regularly alongside the firm’s work in Cross-Border Opinions and Foreign Law, Litigation, Mediation and Arbitration, Notarial Services.