About Us
Attorney Michael Goldstein began his professional career at the start of the 1980s when he was asked by the Administrator General and the Official receiver in the Ministry of Justice to coordinate preparation of companies involved in the purchase and sale of land in the thirties — for the purpose of liquidation. The difficulty faced by the authorities was that contact with thousands of applicants regarding purchase of the land was severed due to the event of the Second World War and the economic crisis at that time, and it was necessary to conduct a historical Judicial research in order to trace each and every contact for determining whether the heirs of the original contract holder were today’s creditors of the company or whether for one legal reason or another they were not entitled any more to the rights (of course research has to be prepared on the basis of the identity of the applicants and their heirs).
Further to his activity in the law firm that he founded, Attorney Michael Goldstein continues to deal with cases for realizing the rights of heirs to lost assets to which they are entitled, and during the past year he founded the Historical-Judicial Research LTD company that deals in this field, in cooperation with genealogical researchers and jurists throughout the world.
Y.S.N.I. Historical-Judicial Research Ltd. manages its work as described above with the assistance of many researchers, each specializing in a specific field and in cooperation with lawyers in different countries. In addition, communication with clients/heirs is carried out directly by the CEO of the company, advocate Michael Goldstein, and he takes responsibility for coordinating the work; this is the uniqueness of the Company.
Advocate Michael Goldstein, graduate of the Faculty of Law, the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and licensed to practice law in Israel for more than 35 years, began his professional career as an intern in the law offices of the late advocate Amram Blum who served as Custodian General and Official Receiver of the state of Israel.
The file assigned to Michael Goldstein in the Ministry of Justice was — “American Zion Commonwealth Ltd.”. This was a company that at the start of the century dealt with purchase of plots of land in Israel for thousands of Jews who were living in Europe and North America. The company had ceased its operations many years earlier with all that that entailed.
The handling of the file involved locating the company’s documents (discovery of a lost archive which contained tens of thousands of files), conducting research to trace and organize the company’s assets, and the thousands of its communications with Jews all over the world for purchasing plots of land in Israel .
CEO Advocate Michael Goldstein.
Subsequent to the work carried out over the years and which was led by Advocate Michael Goldstein (who for this purpose acted as special representative of the Official Receiver and Custodian General), all the assets of the company were concentrated (real estate worth over NIS. 150 million) and analysis of the thousands of aforementioned collated communications was performed, it was found that some contacts had land allotted to them, with some communication was cancelled or discontinued and some — about 1,000 in number, were recognized as being entitled to receive rights to the property of the above-mentioned company, and since the fact that a liquidation order was issued against the company — these contacts (the majority of whom are missing) became creditors of the company.
While carrying out the above work, advocate Michael Goldstein was exposed to all the constituents involved in implementation of genealogical legal research work, both from the legal as well as the research aspects involved, thus acquiring experience and exceptional knowledge in this field.
At the start of his management of the above files, Advocate Michael Goldstein successfully fought the various authorities who claimed that since the rights in question were acquired many years previously by those who had died many years previously, and their identities and the identities of their heirs were unknown — title rights did not apply anymore; however, in his battle as representative of the Official Receiver and Custodian General — he strengthened recognition of existence of rights to abandoned property that must be protected.
Throughout his activities described above and later on within the context of his work as a private lawyer as well as within the context of his work in the company he has founded — Advocate Goldstein sees himself on the one hand as one acting on behalf of the company for establishing the rights of missing heirs who left abandoned property and within this framework he is committed to doing whatever is necessary to enable heirs to realize these rights, while on the other hand as an Officer of the court, obliged to be vigilant in connection with all legal procedures regarding the accuracy and authenticity of all documents and information presented in support of proceedings.
Examples of activities in favor of bestowing rights to heirs of missing persons
- In 1988 Advocate Michael Goldstein filed a petition in the Supreme Court in Israel (File 199/88) against a local authority seeking to collect debts in respect of betterment levies claiming to be a secured creditors. Advocate Goldstein claimed that these debts were to be reclaimed in the liquidation proceedings as regular debts [the significance of the authority’s stand was deduction of a sum amounting to millions of shekels from rights that were supposed to be divided between thousands of heirs to missing persons]. The petition was accepted and became a legal precedent which is used to this day as the basis for distinguishing between reclaimable debts in liquidation/bankruptcy proceedings and debts owed by secured creditors.
- In 1998 Advocate Michael Goldstein filed a petition in the Supreme Court [File 5660/98] against various state authorities violating the provisions set out by the Custodian General law, thus causing irreparable damage to thousands of heirs to the owners of abandoned properties. At the end of 1999 the petition was discussed and rejected with the claim that the state would find it difficult to act as requested due to difficulties in the computerized systems, or in other words what was then called “Bug 2000”. Needless to say that despite the promises of the authorities and the disappearance of “Bug 2000” as if it never existed, nothing was done. It must be noted that the proceedings were accompanied by an investigative team from a large communications network which was directed to fold up their equipment on the day that the court decision was given.
Example of activity as officer of the court
In the year 2017 Advocate Michael Goldstein handled legal proceedings before the Court for Inheritance Issues in Tel Aviv, Israel for issue of an inheritance order following the decease of two missing persons (files 8347-08-17 and 44178-08-17). Advocate Goldstein was not involved in the genealogical research procedures, and the documents used as the basis for the aforesaid application given to him by the alleged heir all carried verification by apostille. At a certain point, after certain suspicion was aroused as to the authenticity of the aforementioned documents (despite their having apostille verification and therefore according to the laws of evidence thought to be genuine documents— based on the international conventions signed by Israel and the country appearing on the apostille signature) — he transferred the main document in the file to a forensic institute, and the results of their examination indicated that the document was a forgery, resulting in Advocate Michael Goldstein informing the Court that he is removing himself from processing the application.
The files handled by the Company are managed directly and personally by Advocate Michael Goldstein, thus ensuring that their treatment is professional, reliable and dedicated.