Is an Israeli Will Valid in the United States? The Notarial Will Travels, the Handwritten One Stops at the Florida Line, and No American Court Is Bound by the Registrar's Order

This is orientation, not legal or tax advice. It maps what exists and the questions to take to a licensed professional. It does not tell you what to do about your own estate or taxes.

A father in Ra'anana dies in March. He was born in Haifa, spent eleven years in Boston on a work visa in the nineties, came home, and gave up the green card long ago. He left a Fidelity account from the Boston years, a condominium in Boca Raton that he bought for the winters, an apartment in Ra'anana, and an account at Bank Hapoalim. He also left one will, in Hebrew, signed in 2019 before a notary in Kfar Saba, leaving everything in equal shares to his son in Ra'anana and his daughter in Teaneck, New Jersey.

The children do what the notary told them to do. They apply to the Registrar of Inheritance Affairs, the application is published, nobody objects, and the probate order, the tzav kiyum tzavaa, issues in June. The daughter sends an apostilled copy with an English translation to Fidelity and to the management company in Boca Raton.

Fidelity writes back asking for letters issued by a United States court, a certified copy of the death certificate, a tax certification for the estate, and something called a transfer certificate from the Internal Revenue Service. The Boca Raton lawyer the daughter finds says that the condominium cannot change hands on the Israeli order and asks to see the original will. The original will is in a file in the Registrar's office in Tel Aviv, and it is written in Hebrew.

None of this is a problem with the will. The will is valid. This page is about everything that comes after that word.

Valid is the easy half

Israel's Succession Law, 5725-1965, recognises four ways to make a will. Section 19 allows a will written entirely in the testator's own hand, dated and signed, with no witnesses at all. Section 20 is the witnessed will, in writing, dated, signed by the testator and by two adult witnesses who are not beneficiaries, all on the same day. Section 22 is the will made before an authority: a judge, the Registrar of Inheritance Affairs, a member of a religious court, or, in practice most often, a notary, who certifies that the testator declared it to be their will. Section 23 is the deathbed will, spoken before two witnesses by a person who believes death is near, written down by the witnesses and deposited with the Registrar, and void if the speaker is still alive thirty days later.

The father's will was a section 22 will. On the American side, the question a court asks about a foreign will is not whether it looks like a local one. It is whether the will was executed in a way that some relevant law accepted at the time. The Uniform Probate Code, in section 2-506, says a written will is valid if its execution complied with the law of the place where it was signed, or of the place where the testator was domiciled, had a place of abode or was a national, either when it was signed or at death. The states that adopted the Uniform Probate Code use that text or something close to it. New York, which never adopted the Uniform Probate Code, reaches the same result through EPTL 3-5.1(c): a will is formally valid and admissible to probate in New York if it is in writing, signed by the testator, and executed under the law of New York, of the place where it was signed, or of the testator's domicile at signing or at death. California Probate Code section 6113 uses the Uniform Probate Code formula. Florida Statutes section 732.502(2) accepts a nonresident's will if it was valid where executed, with one exclusion that the next section is about.

For a witnessed will under section 20 or a notarial will under section 22, that is the end of the validity question. An Israeli domiciliary signed a written will in Israel under Israeli formalities. Every state test on that list is satisfied twice over, once by the place of signing and once by domicile. A New Jersey lawyer who tells the daughter that her father's will "does not count" because it was not witnessed the New Jersey way is wrong, and the daughter should ask for the statute.

The handwritten will, and the state that will not read it

Section 19 wills are common in Israel. Older Israelis write them on a single page, sign and date them, and put them in a drawer. They are fully valid in Israel, and an Israeli lawyer will probate one without difficulty. They are also the one Israeli will form on which American states actually disagree.

A section 19 will is what American law calls a holographic will: in the testator's hand, signed, unwitnessed. Under the Uniform Probate Code formula and under New York's EPTL 3-5.1(c), a holographic will valid where it was signed is valid in the forum. New York's own execution rules do not allow holographic wills for ordinary residents, but paragraph (c) looks past that to the law of the place of execution, and the only fixed conditions are that the will be in writing and signed by the testator. A section 19 will meets both. California section 6113 works the same way, and California allows holographic wills of its own in any case.

Florida does not. Section 732.502(2) reads: any will, other than a holographic or nuncupative will, executed by a nonresident of Florida is valid in Florida if valid under the laws of the state or country where it was executed. The exclusion is deliberate, and the Florida courts apply it to foreign wills exactly as written. In Zaidman v. Zaidman, decided by Florida's Third District Court of Appeal in 2020, a man had signed a formal will in Florida in 2012 and then, in 2015, handwritten a second will in Belgium, in the presence of at most one witness, revoking the first. His children, who lived in Belgium and Israel, offered the 2015 will. The Florida court refused to probate it. The 2012 will controlled, and the children's petition was struck. In Lee v. Estate of Payne, a 2013 decision, a Colorado holographic will that Colorado had accepted was refused in Florida, and the Florida property passed as if there had been no will at all.

For the family on this page, the practical rule is short. A section 19 will governs the Ra'anana apartment, the Hapoalim account and, as far as formal validity goes, the Fidelity account. It does not reach a condominium in Boca Raton. If the father's only will had been handwritten, the Boca Raton condominium would pass under Florida's intestacy rules, to the same two children in this case, but not in every family, and not with the same tax and timing consequences.

The section 23 deathbed will fares worse. It is not written by the testator and not signed by the testator; the witnesses write it. It fails the "in writing and signed" condition in New York, it is a nuncupative will that Florida excludes by name, and it would be a novelty in any American probate court. Treat it as an Israel-only document.

Israeli will form	Uniform Probate Code states and California	New York	Florida
Section 22, before a notary or authority	Valid	Valid	Valid
Section 20, two witnesses	Valid	Valid	Valid
Section 19, handwritten, no witnesses	Valid (valid where signed)	Valid (in writing, signed by testator)	Not accepted, even though valid in Israel
Section 23, oral deathbed will	Not in practice	Not in writing and signed by testator	Excluded as nuncupative

The table describes formal validity only. Whether a valid will actually governs a given asset is a separate question, and it is decided asset by asset.

Which law reads the will

American choice-of-law rules split an estate by the kind of property. New York's EPTL 3-5.1(b) states the rule most American courts follow: a disposition of real property is governed by the law of the place where the land sits, and the intrinsic validity and effect of a disposition of personal property are governed by the law of the testator's domicile at death. Israeli law starts from the same place; the Succession Law applies the law of the deceased's domicile, subject to Israeli law for land in Israel.

So the father's will is read under Israeli law for the Fidelity account, because Fidelity holds personal property and the father died domiciled in Israel. It is read under Florida law for the condominium, because the condominium is Florida land. The Israeli notary drafted one sentence, "all my property wherever located, in equal shares." For the brokerage that sentence is interpreted by an Israeli rule; for the condominium, by a Florida one. Usually they agree. Where the will does something Israeli law permits and Florida law does not, or names a beneficiary in a way Florida reads differently, they will not, and the Florida court decides the Florida question.

This is why the answer to "is the will valid in the United States" is always followed by "for which asset."

The Registrar's order is evidence, not authority

The daughter's mistake, and it is an easy one, was to treat the tzav kiyum tzavaa as if it were the American equivalent of letters testamentary. It is not, for a reason that has nothing to do with Israel. The full faith and credit clause of the US Constitution requires each state to honour the judgments of sister states. A foreign country's order is recognised, if at all, under the receiving state's own statute or as a matter of comity, and every state writes its own rule.

California's rule is in Probate Code sections 12520 to 12524. A will of a nondomiciliary that was admitted to probate in a foreign nation is admitted in California on an authenticated copy of the will and of the foreign order, and section 12523 shields it from contest only where three things appear: the foreign determination rested on a finding that the decedent was domiciled in that country at death, all interested parties had notice and an opportunity to contest, and the determination is final. An Israeli probate order is issued after publication and an objection window, which is described on the probate page, so the notice condition is usually satisfied. The domicile condition is the one to watch. The Registrar's order confirms the will; it does not necessarily state where the father was domiciled, and the California lawyer may need to prove that separately.

Florida has two routes. Section 734.104 lets an authenticated copy of a nonresident's will that devises Florida real property, and that has been admitted to probate in the proper court of another country, be admitted to record in the county where the property lies, after which it passes title as if probated in Florida. The section carries two conditions that matter here. The first is timing: it is available only two years after the death, or after the domiciliary personal representative has been discharged. The second is that the will must have been executed as Florida's chapter 732 requires, which is the same rule that excludes the handwritten will. Before two years have run, or where the family needs to sell sooner, the route is ancillary administration under section 734.102, with a Florida court appointing a personal representative, usually the same person named in the Israeli will if that person is eligible to serve.

New York has an ancillary probate procedure in Article 16 of the Surrogate's Court Procedure Act for wills probated abroad, and the Uniform Probate Code states have their own in Article IV. None of them treats the Israeli order as self-executing. All of them accept it as strong evidence of what the will is and that Israel has already confirmed it.

Two documents cause more delay in these files than the law does. The first is the original will. In Israel the original is filed with the probate application and stays in the Registrar's file. American courts are used to receiving the original, and Florida section 733.205 has a specific route for notarial wills only where the foreign country's law requires the notary to keep the original, which Israeli law does not. What the family needs, before the American lawyer starts, is a set of authenticated copies from the Registrar, of the will, the application and the order, each with an apostille. Israel and the United States are both parties to the Hague Apostille Convention, so no consular legalisation is required, but the apostille has to be obtained in Israel, on the Israeli documents, by someone in Israel.

The second is the translation. A will written in Hebrew cannot be admitted to probate in Florida without a true and complete English translation, under section 733.204, and the translation the court establishes is the one the personal representative may rely on. Other states have equivalent rules or practice. The translation should be commissioned once, by a translator who will sign an affidavit, and used for every American proceeding, rather than redone by a different translator for each institution.

What the brokerage wants, and what the IRS wants first

The Israeli order does not open the Fidelity account, but neither does an American court order on its own. The brokerage transfer page sets out the sequence: proof of authority in a form the institution recognises, a Medallion signature guarantee that an heir in Israel usually cannot obtain without a US banking relationship, and a tax certification for the estate and for each recipient. This page adds the piece that is specific to a will made by someone who was not a US person.

Because the father was neither a US citizen nor a US resident, his US-situs assets are subject to US estate tax under 26 USC 2101 with an exemption of $60,000, not the $15,000,000 that applies to citizens and residents in 2026. Shares of US companies held at a US brokerage are US-situs property. Florida real estate is US-situs property. Once the gross value of those assets at death exceeds $60,000, before subtracting the mortgage on the condominium, the estate must file Form 706-NA, and there is no US-Israel estate tax treaty to raise the threshold; only the income tax treaty is in force. The $60,000 trap page explains how the tax is computed. What matters for the will is the sequence: the brokerage will not release the account until the IRS has issued a transfer certificate, Form 5173, and the IRS issues the certificate only after it has processed the return and either collected the tax or confirmed none is due. Practitioners currently report six to nine months from a complete filing, with some packages running well past a year.

Had the father been a US citizen living in Israel, the estate tax exposure would be different, but the brokerage's demand would not disappear. Institutions routinely ask for a transfer certificate, or an IRS letter saying none is required, for any decedent who died outside the United States, and the estate then has to show the IRS the consular report of death, proof of citizenship, and that the estate is below the filing threshold.

The order of operations for the Fidelity account is therefore Israel first for the will, the United States second for the court authority, and the IRS in parallel from the day the family knows the account exists, because the IRS clock is the longest one.

Which country first

For a family with assets in both countries and one Israeli will, the sequence that causes the least damage is usually this.

1. Apply for the Israeli probate order first. Israel was the domicile, the Registrar has the will, and every American proceeding will be easier with the Israeli order in hand as evidence of the will and of its confirmation. Order the authenticated, apostilled copies of the will, the application and the order at the same time as the order itself.
2. Commission one certified English translation of the will and of the order, with a translator's affidavit, before contacting any American institution.
3. Identify each US asset and the state that governs it. Brokerage accounts and bank accounts follow Israeli law through domicile but need an American court's authority or a state small-estate procedure; real property follows the law of the state where it sits and needs a proceeding there.
4. If the will is a section 19 handwritten will and there is real property in Florida, or in another state that refuses holographic wills, tell the American lawyer at the first call. That property is passing by intestacy, and the family should plan around it rather than discover it at closing.
5. If the father was not a US person and the US-situs assets exceed $60,000 gross, engage a US accountant for Form 706-NA immediately, and let the brokerage know the transfer certificate is in process.

The two-wills question, whether an Israeli parent with American property should have signed an American will as well, is the mirror of this page, and the two-wills page addresses it from the American side. The short answer for the family here is that a second will, drafted under the law of the state where the condominium sits and limited to that property, would have removed the Florida translation and authentication chain and, had the Israeli will been handwritten, would have saved the condominium from intestacy. A second will also introduces the revocation trap that page describes. Whether it is worth it is a question for the Israeli lawyer and the American lawyer together, while the parent is alive.

What to ask, and who to ask it of

Ask the Israeli lawyer handling the probate application:

• Which section of the Succession Law the will was made under, and whether the witnesses or the notary can still be reached if an American court asks for an affidavit of due execution.
• How many authenticated, apostilled copies of the will, the application and the order to request from the Registrar, and whether the order will state the father's domicile.
• Whether the will was deposited with the Registrar under section 21 before death, and if so what the deposit record shows.

Ask the American probate attorney in the state where each asset sits:

• Whether the state follows the Uniform Probate Code formula, EPTL 3-5.1, or something narrower, and specifically how it treats a holographic will valid where signed.
• Whether the Israeli order can be admitted on an authenticated copy, and under which section, or whether a full ancillary administration is needed, and who is eligible to serve as personal representative.
• Whether the state requires the original will, and what it accepts instead when the original is held by a foreign registry.
• What the court requires of a foreign-language will and its translation.

Ask the US accountant or estate tax practitioner:

• Whether the decedent was a US person at death, and if not, the gross date-of-death value of every US-situs asset against the $60,000 threshold.
• Whether Form 706-NA must be filed, when the transfer certificate can realistically be expected, and what the brokerage will accept in the meantime.
• Whether the heirs in Israel and the United States have their own reporting once the assets move, on the lines set out on the Form 3520 page and the FBAR page.

And ask the family whether the parent, if still alive, has any American real property at all, and if so, whether the one Israeli will is handwritten. That single fact decides whether the American property is inside the will or outside it, and it is the one question on this page that costs nothing to answer while there is still time to change the answer.