Halachic Estate Planning

Two Systems, One Plan

An observant Jewish family plans across two systems at once, halacha (Jewish law) and Florida law. Under Torah inheritance, an estate passes in a fixed order, sons before daughters, 2 shares to the firstborn son for every other son's 1, and a spouse provided for through the ketubah rather than by inheriting. Most families today want something different, to provide for sons and daughters alike and to care for a surviving spouse. A purely secular will that simply distributes against that order can leave observant heirs with a halachic problem. The good news is that there is a well-established way to honor both.

The Halachic Will

The bridge is a halachic will, traditionally a shtar chatzi zachar ("document of half a male portion"). Instead of distributing by inheritance, the giver creates a binding obligation, a large debt payable from the estate to the heirs who would not inherit by default, that takes effect a moment before death. Because it works as a gift or obligation rather than inheritance, it lets your secular will distribute exactly as you wish while remaining valid under Jewish law. Recognized forms are published by the Beth Din of America and other rabbinical authorities.

What Is the Difference Between a Halachic Will and a Regular Will?

A common question I hear is, “What is the difference between a halachic will and a regular will?” The regular will is the Florida document. It moves your property, it is signed in front of 2 witnesses, and a probate court enforces it. The halachic will moves nothing. It is a lifetime debt, signed with a kinyan in front of your rabbi rather than at a will ceremony, under which you bind yourself now to pay a fixed dollar sum larger than your whole estate to the heirs who would otherwise be left out, and the debt dissolves if the Torah heirs honor the Florida plan. So the two documents never compete. One transfers the property, the other makes the transfer binding in Jewish law, and neither is filed in the other's court.

People ask me who keeps the document, and the honest answer is that your rabbi or a third party holds the 1 signed original of the halachic will, and the attorney keeps the Florida will and trust. The two are cross-referenced in the Florida documents so that the standard clause revoking all prior instruments cannot be read to sweep the halachic will away.

How It Fits Your Florida Plan

Your Florida will or revocable trust does the legal work under state law. It controls your property, avoids or manages probate, and names guardians and fiduciaries. The halachic will sits alongside it and makes that distribution binding under Jewish law. We draft and coordinate the secular side, and the halachic instrument is prepared with your rabbi or beth din, so both systems say the same thing.

Two Florida rules sit above both documents. A surviving spouse can claim 30 percent of the elective estate no matter what any will says, so a plan that gives a spouse less than that needs a separate spousal waiver signed in front of 2 witnesses, and no halachic instrument can substitute for it. And a homestead cannot be left away from a surviving spouse or a minor child at all. The Florida documents are drafted around those two rules first, and the halachic will is written to match them.

The Halachic Prenup and the Get

For couples, the halachic prenup addresses the agunah problem, a spouse refusing to grant a get (a Jewish divorce), by agreeing in advance to the authority of a beth din. It is prepared with your rabbinical authorities. We make sure your civil prenuptial or postnuptial agreement and your estate plan stay consistent with it.

A Note on Our Role

Kevin is a Florida estate-planning attorney who understands this community and its needs. Questions of halacha belong to your rabbi or beth din, and our job is to make the civil-law side honor those decisions, cleanly and without conflict. That side is 3 documents, the Florida will or trust, the matching clauses inside it, and a separate signed agreement that sends any dispute among the heirs to a named beth din, whose money award a Florida court then confirms.

Frequently Asked Questions

Sources of Law

• Execution and spousal rights: Fla. Stat. §732.502 (2 attesting witnesses); §732.2065 (elective share of 30 percent); §732.702 (waiver of spousal rights, signed before 2 subscribing witnesses); §732.4015 and Fla. Const. Art. X §4(c) (devise of homestead).
• No-contest clauses and arbitration: §732.517 and §736.1108 (annotated) (penalty clauses for contesting a will or trust are unenforceable); §731.401 (arbitration provisions in wills and trusts, validity disputes excepted); Revised Florida Arbitration Code, §682.02 (agreements enforceable), §682.12 (confirmation of an award), §682.13 (vacatur).
• Case: Ainsworth v. Schoen, 606 So. 2d 1275 (Fla. 3d DCA 1992) (a beth din award confirmed on summary judgment, reversed because the parties' own rabbis disagreed on whether the ruling was final; remanded for that finding). Read in full from the official opinion text. Beth Din of America materials on the halachic will (shtar chatzi zachar), reviewed 2026-06-09. (retrieved 2026-09-03)

What a Florida Court Did With a Beth Din's Ruling

I went through the Florida case law on this myself rather than relying on a summary of it. The Florida decisions that touch a beth din are few, and the one that matters most for an estate plan is a commercial case from 1992, because it shows exactly what a Florida judge will and will not do with a rabbinical ruling.

What I have not seen a secular will do is settle a halachic question on its own, and that case shows why the third document in this plan matters. Two Orthodox businessmen in Miami fell out over whether payment was due on a shipment of goods, and they did what observant people do. They took it to a beth din of 3 rabbis and signed an agreement that the rabbis' decision would be legally binding on them with no recourse to any other authority. On December 27, 1990 the panel ruled that one side owed the other $159,250. The winner took the award to the circuit court to have it confirmed, which is the ordinary route for any arbitration award in Florida, and the court confirmed it. The losing side then filed sworn statements from rabbis. One member of the panel said the proceeding might not be finished, because a higher beth din in New York or in Israel could in theory take up the matter. A rabbi who had not sat on the panel said the parties had a right to appeal. A third member of the panel said the ruling was final. In November 1992 the appellate court said it was not going to decide what Jewish law says about finality, reversed the confirmation, and sent the case back for the trial judge to weigh the rabbis' testimony and find whether the award was final. Nearly 2 years after the rabbis ruled, the $159,250 was still not collectible, and one judge dissented on the ground that the parties' own words had already settled it.

In reading that opinion with an estate plan in mind, I have a few take-home points.

The first is that a Florida court will honor a beth din's decision, and it will honor it as an arbitration award, which is the only way it can. The judges in that case said plainly that they were not Talmudic scholars and would not become ones. What they would do is confirm a money award once they could see it was final. Practice pointer. The arbitration agreement that carries a halachic plan names 1 beth din by name, states that its decision is final, and says whether any appeal to another beth din exists and by what date, because the sentence missing from that 1990 agreement was the one about finality, and the court could confirm nothing without it.

Second, the teeth of a halachic plan live in that separate agreement and nowhere else. Florida law makes a no-contest clause inside a will or a trust unenforceable, and a Florida judge will not apply Torah law to decide who inherits, so a halachic will that relies on either of those has no civil force. What a Florida court will enforce is a signed contract to arbitrate before a named beth din, which then applies Jewish law internally and issues a money award the court confirms. Practice pointer. Every person who could challenge the plan signs that agreement as its own document, with full formalities, rather than reading about it in a clause of the will.

Third, the plan holds only if every Florida document says the same thing. The halachic will's debt dissolves on one condition, that the Torah heirs honor the will, every trust, and every beneficiary designation. A single retirement account form that names someone different breaks the condition, and the coercive debt, sized at 2 to 3 times the estate, is then owed for real. Practice pointer. Before the kinyan, I inventory every account and policy and set each designation to match the plan, and I put a cross-reference in the will and the trust so their boilerplate revocation clause cannot be read to cancel the halachic will.

Avoid an arbitration agreement that says binding and stops there, because in the case above 3 rabbis gave 3 different answers on whether the ruling could be appealed, and a Florida court sent the parties back to litigate that question 2 years after the beth din had already ruled. One sentence naming the beth din and stating that its decision is final, with no appeal to any other beth din, would have let the circuit court confirm the $159,250 award in 1991 and end the matter. The Florida documents that carry a halachic plan are a flat fee from $1,200 for one person and $1,950 for a couple with the will plan, or $3,200 and $4,500 with the trust plan, and the halachic pieces are quoted at the consult. The halachic will itself is prepared with your rabbi, at his fee rather than mine.

No Florida appellate court has ruled on a halachic will itself, whether as a creditor claim against an estate or otherwise, and I will not tell you that one has. What the Florida cases show is how a court treats a beth din's decision, and that is the part I can draft for. Whether a particular family needs the halachic will at all is a question for the rabbi, and I say so at the first meeting rather than sell a document the family has no use for.

Kevin D. Klagge, Esq., admitted in Florida since 2012. The case described above is a decision of a Florida court rather than a matter handled by this firm. Past results do not guarantee a similar outcome.

Updated on September 3, 2026. Reviewed by Kevin D. Klagge, Esq., Fla. Bar No. 99502. Attorney Kevin Klagge represents families, businesses, and international clients in estate and tax planning, business structuring, and international law, with a focus on Florida legal tools. He litigates estate and business issues in court. General information about Florida law, not legal or halachic advice, and no attorney-client relationship is created. Halachic determinations are made by your rabbi or beth din. Do not send confidential information until we have agreed to represent you.