An elderly woman with cash and real estate assets in her will left one son four dollars and most of the remainder of her estate to a second son, other family members and charity. Members of the beis din in Ariel; Rav Meir Freeman, Rav Meir Kahan and Rav Yitzchak Rappaport were asked to adjudicate the matter in two separate requests.

The son who received the estate calls on the beis din to execute the will in line with the wishes of his mother and the second son, who is seeking to cancel the will, which leaves him with just four dollars.

The elderly woman, a teacher and a librarian by profession, has something with wills. She wrote several different wills that she used to update from time to time. In the last version, written about a year and a half ago, the woman left an original and valuable picture of the artist Abel Penn to one of her grandchildren, as well as Stern’s valuable jewelry to her niece. All her possessions she had left her young son and the eldest son commanded: only four dollars. According to the detailed will, one percent of its property will be used for burial and commemoration expenses and the remainder of that percentage for charity. Together with the writing of the last will, she also gave the benefactors their share.

The son who feels he was discriminated against claims that
his brother was the one who edited the will. He now stipulates that one who
stands to benefit from it, the will, may not edit it. He noted that the mother
was an expert linguist and a literary woman and her husband had an excellent
writing ability. According to him, if she needed help in drafting and editing,
it was only because she had a stroke and stayed at the home of the winning
heir. This is the basis of the brother who request the annulment of the will by
the beis din.

The dayanim probed the sons for a long time and concluded that the will was made by the mother being healthy and lucid and indeed reflects the mother’s desire, since the mother’s relationship with the son who has been deprived has faded over the past few years due to a falling out.

The son confirmed that their assessment, but claimed that he had expected and was told in the past that his mother would inherit his share of his son’s inheritance, the grandson of the deceased who was very close to her. The winning son also confirmed this and said that indeed in a previous will she left property to the grandson, his nephew, but after the grandson left the country and it tore her heart, she decided to exclude him as well.

After an in-depth examination of the facts and of the halachic sources, the dayanim decided to confirm the validity of the will, with a precedent setting ruling regarding the one who will benefit from a will may take part in preparing the will.

The beis din ruled that this is only problematic where there is a fear that the executor of the will changed the opinion of the deceased. In the matter of the brothers’ quarrel, despite the disconnection between them, they both agreed that the will accurately reflected the will of their deceased mother. As such, one son will receive only four dollars while the second son will receive, according to the will, property and the rest of the money and assets left by the deceased, after it was proved that this was what she wanted.

(YWN – Israel Desk, Jerusalem)