Judith Meisels, Law Offices

The Judith Meisels Law Offices is a leading firm in the field of Family and Inheritance Law. The firm is credited with participating in numerous cases that have generated important precedential rulings, including by the Israeli Supreme Court. The firm’s professional legal team is fluent in both English and Hebrew.

Fields of Expertise

The Judith Meisels Law Offices specializes in providing tailor-made services suited to each client’s unique circumstances. The firm specializes in complex and precedent-setting property disputes, including division of goodwill and career assets, dissolution of joint ownership in family businesses, division of shares in private and public corporations registered under one spouse (in value or in kind), and management of complex property disputes involving trusts in Israel and abroad.

The firm also handles proceedings involving concealed or transferred assets, challenges and enforcement of complex prenuptial agreements, and their drafting. In each matter, the firm defines the legal strategy and leads the proceedings throughout.

The firm also specializes in international matters, including cross-border property disputes, child abduction under the Hague Convention, divorce between citizens of different countries, determination of parentage following surrogacy procedures abroad, international custody, and cross-border family disputes.

The firm consists of a team of 6 attorneys and is consistently ranked among the top Family Law firms in the Dun’s 100 ranking by Dun & Bradstreet, as well as among leading firms in the BDI ranking. The firm is committed to determination, integrity, and fairness, and actively promotes equality and justice in all its activities. This determination has resulted in many of the firm’s precedential cases. Promoting equality and raising awareness of clients’ rights form the foundation of the firm’s values. Adv. Meisels combines practical expertise with academic depth and remains at the forefront of legal developments in Israel and internationally.

Adv. Meisels has particular expertise in complex inheritance law matters. The firm handles drafting of wills and mutual wills, objections to wills, management of complex inheritance disputes, estate administration, and receiverships. Additional areas of specialization include surrogacy, shared parenthood, same-sex families, single-parent and multi-parent families. The firm handled, among other matters, the first LGBT divorce case in Israel. It also handles pioneering cases involving posthumous use of sperm or eggs from deceased donors.

Established in 2007, the firm has influenced legislative processes in family law, including the Draft Parents and Their Children Law (2011–2012) and the Law on Resolution of Family Disputes (Temporary Order, 2014–2015).

Adv. Judith Meisels

Adv. Judith Meisels holds an LL.M. (magna cum laude) and has been a certified attorney since 1998. With 28 years of experience in family and inheritance law and extensive practice management in these fields, she has accumulated broad legal expertise.

Adv. Meisels is involved in legislative processes, lectures in academia, and has held a wide range of public positions. She teaches Family Law at the College of Management Law School as an adjunct lecturer.

She lectures on Family and Inheritance Law at institutions including Tel Aviv University, Bar-Ilan University, the Israel Bar Association, governmental bodies, and professional conferences. She is a regular columnist in a leading Israeli newspaper and appears in media as a legal expert. Her articles and precedents have received public and academic attention.

Adv. Meisels is a member of the Inter-University Academic Forum for Family Law and the Family Law Forum of the Israel Bar Association, which shape the field of family law in Israel. She served as Vice Chair of the LGBT Committee of the Israel Bar Association, as a member of its Women’s Advancement Committee, and as part of a subcommittee for amendments to the Legal Capacity and Guardianship Law. Between 1998–2000, she served as Senior Legal Counsel at the Claims Resolution Tribunal in Zurich for international arbitration regarding dormant Swiss bank accounts.

Clientele Profile

The firm maintains strict confidentiality regarding its clients. The firm represents men and women from all sectors of Israeli society, including high-net-worth individuals, business figures, professionals, senior figures in the legal system, and foreign residents.

The firm also provides pro bono legal services through the “Heart Project” – the Association to Combat Poverty, and the “Shachar Mitzvah” program of the Israel Bar Association.

Prominent Cases and Selected Precedents

Cases handled by the firm have often been at the center of public attention in Israel. Among them is a Supreme Court ruling regarding mutual wills. In another inheritance precedent, the Court interpreted the Inheritance Law in a purposive manner and ruled that a widow was not entitled to inherit her deceased spouse, as she was no longer considered his partner.

In another case, a soldier’s family was permitted to use his genetic material to bring a child into the world.

The firm was responsible for a Supreme Court ruling, sitting as an expanded panel of seven justices, in the case known as the “Mamet Case,” which established the concept of a “judicial parenthood order” and recognized full legal parenthood for two fathers.

The firm recently won a landmark ultra-high-net-worth case that expanded the doctrine of specific co-ownership, resulting in the award of tens of millions of dollars and exposure of hidden assets abroad, including in international trusts. The firm has also created precedent-setting rulings in common-law partnership cases, complex property disputes, alimony, custody, and the first civil same-sex divorce in Israel, which received wide media coverage. The firm has further led landmark rulings in international relocation cases and child abduction cases under the Hague Convention, including cases involving cross-border abductions between Israel and Italy and the legal implications of dual abduction, as well as the testimony of minors in such proceedings.

Publications

• “Of Honey and Sting: Custody Arrangements in Israeli Law”, Children’s Rights and Israeli Law (Tel Aviv University, 2010)

• “Reflections on the Absence of Mutual Intention in Family Law following HCJ 4077/12”, Human Rights Journal

• “Legal Parenthood” and “Adoption”, in LGBT Rights in Israel (Hebrew University Press)

• “The Voice of Blood vs. Legal Personality”, HCJ 566/11, 6569/11

• “Into the Bedroom – Infidelity Case HCJ 4602/13”, Human Rights Journal (2019)

• “Inheritance Provisions in Agreements vs. Wills”, Israeli Bar Association Journal (2022)

• “Truth and Lies in the Family: Reflections on Judicial Intervention in Family Secrets Following the Paternity Fraud Case” (2026), published in Nevo

• “In the Best of Families”, regular personal column on family and inheritance law, “Family Channel”, Haaretz newspaper.