Over generations, many foreigners have invested in Israel, sometimes decades ago, in agricultural land that was often considered worthless at the time. Through successive wars and population migrations, families have sometimes been scattered to the point of losing track of certain relatives or certain properties left in Israel.
What happens in Israel to properties whose owners died without known successors?
1. What is a lost property? When the owner of a property in Israel dies, the heirs to this real estate, bank account or insurance policy, for example, generally come forward to obtain a succession certificate and register the properties in their name. Due to the fact that there are no inheritance taxes in Israel, the law imposes neither obligation nor time limits to claim inheritance. Thus, it sometimes happens that properties are not claimed, either because heirs are outside Israel and are not aware of these properties, or because they don't even know they are inheriting from a distant relative in Israel.
2. Why manage forgotten or lost properties? In some cases, a property could be owned by several members of the same family as co-owners, who for example inherited together from a common ancestor. If one of them died without leaving a trace of their heirs, the others cannot dispose of the property due to one or more deceased relatives. If one wants to sell, an administrator must substitute for the deceased to allow everyone to sell with court supervision. Similarly, if a property is part of a large condominium that must undertake a major real estate project as a whole, for example, it is necessary to administer the deceased co-owner's share to advance the project even before finding the heirs.
3. The State's role: in Israel, the Ministry of Justice has a Department of Abandoned Properties, which searches for, collects and administers properties, while looking for rightful claimants in parallel. This department even goes so far as to inform people abroad of their right to claim inheritance from a distant relative who died in Israel without children. If certain heirs prove their rights, they may even collect their share, in some cases, without all the rightful claimants having been identified.
4. The identification process: Rightful claimants who claim to be heirs will therefore have to follow a rather long and complicated procedure, even if they have been contacted by the State, they will have to prove their right but also their identity and the link with the deceased, and the property concerned, sometimes over several generations, through several successive deaths.
Our firm specializes in this type of procedure. We assist our clients from different countries to locate properties, locate heirs, administer estates, and sometimes free properties from temporary or abusive administration.
