"Spouse" Abuse- After 45 Years of Marriage, Widow Not Entitled to Inheritance

Earlier this month, in the case of In Re: YA, the Tel Aviv Family Court, Judge Shifra Glick, ruled that the widow, C.A., was not entitled to inherit her husband, Y.A.'s estate even though they had been married for 45 years.

The court based its decision on its interpretation of the word "בן זוג- spouse" in the Succession Law-1965 and the purpose of the inheritance law.

Section 10 of the law states that the heirs of a person who dies intestate, i.e. without a will are:

1. a person who was, at the time of the decedent's death, the spouse of the decedent
2. the children of the decedent and their heirs, the parents of the decedent and their heirs, the grandparents of the decedent and their heirs.

Section 11 of the same law details the right of the spouse to inherit:

A) the spouse of the decedent takes all chattel (portable property) including automobiles, belonging ... to the common estate, and takes from the rest of the estate:

1. If the decedent is survived by children or their offspring or his parents - half;
2. If the decedent is survived by siblings or their offspring or his grandparents - two-thirds, provided that before his death, his spouse was married to him for three or more years and lived with him at the time in the dwelling that is included, in whole or in part, in the estate, the spouse will take the decedent's share of the dwelling, and two-thirds of the rest of the estate.

(B) If the decedent left none of the heirs enumerated in sub-section A above then the spouse shall inherit the entire estate.

Also relevant was section 55 of the Succession Law which recognizes the rights of common-law spouses to inherit as long as 1) the common-law spouse was not simultaneously married to someone else and 2) there was no will expressly disinheriting the common-law spouse.

Now, I ain't sayin' she's a gold-digger, but ...

it turns out that C.A. and Y.A. hadn't lived together in at least 36 years. The couple married in 1962 and had a daughter two years later (she subsequently died in 1986). The marriage was rocky from the start and C.A. moved out a few times to go live with her parents. In 1966, C.A. presented Y.A. with the terms of a divorce and a division of property. Y.A. didn't show up for the divorce proceedings and left the country. He visited a few times until 1975 when he broke off all contact with C.A. and never returned to Israel. Not only that, but from approximately 1972 until 2008, C.A. was living with S.S. as a common-law wife and they had two children together. (Although at one point it seems that C.A. claimed that the 2 daughters were from Y.A.)

The judge wrote that there are two types of "spouses." The first is one who entered the marriage through a formal arrangement and the second is one who shared a family style arrangement and was not simultaneously married to someone else. In this case, although there was a formal marriage, the population registry and Interior Ministry listed the couple as married, and they were never religiously divorced, the judge felt that the word spouse required some interpretation.

Judge Glick said that when interpreting a legal text one must distinguish between the linguistic implications and the legal implications. She quoted former Justice (and later Chief Justice) Aharon Barak:

In the first analysis, the judge acts as a linguist, in examining the linguistic options; in the second analysis the judge is an interpreter as he tries to understand the intent of the law, and as he tries to choose the linguistic option that best represents the intent of the law. Both of these analyses are dynamic. A judge may not- absent the sense that the interpretation before him is absurd- (and that sense is absent in the case before us) give expression to to an intent that has not, even the slightest, foothold in the text of the law. The task of interpretation is not limited to words but the words limit the interpretation... It is possible that the letter of the law will be given a broad or narrow interpretation, an ordinary or extraordinary interpretation, but in general there must be a foothold for the purpose in the wording of the statute. By the same token, the judge may not rely only on the linguistic interpretation, because the statue is not merely a linguistic text alone. The statute is a normative creation, that expresses the social purpose. And that is an expression of policy. The interpreter has the task of uncovering from among the range of linguistic options the meaning the expresses the intent of the statute. (FH 40/80 Koenig v. Cohen PDI 36(3) 701, 715 (1982)).

For her linguistic interpretation of "spouse" she further quoted Chief Justice Barak that a spouse is one of a pair, and there is no inherent implication in the word that the pair must be married. (It is clearer in Hebrew, where זוג means "a pair" and so בן-זוג means "one of a pair." In English, the word spouse does connote marriage.)

Judge Glick then moved on to her legal interpretation of the word spouse which must embody the goals of the law. She wrote that there are four goals of sections 10-11 of the Succession Law entitling a spouse to inherit:

1. it gives a person whom the decedent had formally married the right to inherit his estate;
2. it reflects the presumed intent of the decedent, that he would have wanted his close relatives to inherit his estate;
3. it protects and strengthens the interests of the nuclear family of the decedent; and
4. it treats formal marriages and common law marriages equally.

In this case, she said, C.A. is not the type of spouse envisioned by section 11 of the Succession Law. Even C.A. and Y.A. themselves didn't consider themselves as husband and wife for at least 30 years. The first goal of giving the spouse of the decedent the right to inherit the estate is inapplicable, Judge Glick wrote, where the couple was formally married but only lived together for 4 years and for more than 30 years they had no communication whatsoever. The second goal, to reflect the presumed intent of the decedent, would certainly not be accomplished by giving Y.A.'s estranged wife all of his estate. Further, it would not be appropriate to consider C.A. a member of Y.A.'s nuclear family when she was considered the spouse of someone else, in order to meet the third goal of the law. Finally, the fourth goal was inapplicable because C.A. and Y.A. were not in a common-law marriage. For these reasons, the judge ruled that C.A. was neither a spouse under the linguistic nor legal sense of the word and she was not "one of a pair" with Y.A.

Judge Glick also cited the case of Sebag v. Sebag where the Supreme Court had ruled that a couple can be religiously married but not deemed married for the purposes of the succession law. She also cited another case where Justice Barak said that where a woman refused to receive a Jewish divorce from her husband, she could be considered married to him but still not be his "spouse" for the purposes of the law.

(And since she was a common-law spouse of S.S., she couldn't also be married to Y.A.) 

A similar case was in the news in California recently where a woman, Andrea Left, got divorced from her first husband, Andrew, with a stipulation that he would have to continue to pay her alimony and child support until she got remarried. Well, she found a new man, Dr. Todd Katzman, sent out wedding invitations, registered at Bloomingdale's, wore a wedding dress, and had a ketuba (a Jewish prenuptial agreement) but did not register her marriage with the State of California. The ex-husband claimed that was enough to be considered remarried but the court rejected his argument.

"Andrew has provided no authority that the term 'remarriage' as used in section 4337 means anything other than a remarriage carried our in conformity with the statutory requirements," Justice Victoria Chavez wrote for a three-member panel, referring to the Family Code. "Because Andrea and Todd did not meet those requirements, they did not marry, and Andrew's obligation to pay spousal support did not terminate under section 4337."

So although she may have been a new bride, she was not technically remarried. 

To see a website dedicated to Israeli inheritance law see here.

For a general article on wills in Israel, see here.

For an introduction to Israeli succession law, see here and for a discussion including inter vivos trusts see here.

For an article called Excusing Harmless Error In Will Execution: The Israeli Experience by Samuel Flaks see here.