Background
The parties married in 2018 and their minor daughter was born in 2023. They separated in July 2025. In September 2025 the mother filed a child-maintenance claim in the Family Court in Ashdod, and in November 2025 she followed with a motion for temporary maintenance of 6,910 NIS per month together with additional child-related expenses.
After receiving the father’s response, the Family Court (Judge K. Haddad, December 29, 2025) ordered him to pay temporary child support of 2,300 NIS per month, finding him legally obligated in any event to cover the minor’s essential needs given her age. The court also required him to bear half of the child’s education expenses and extraordinary medical costs not covered by health insurance.
The father sought leave to appeal to the Beer Sheva District Court, arguing that the Family Court had not explained how it calculated the 2,300 NIS figure and challenging the reasoning and findings regarding his financial situation. The District Court (Judge G. Levin, January 18, 2026) dismissed that application without even requesting a response, holding that the case did not justify leave to appeal an interlocutory decision — a conclusion it said applied with even greater force to a temporary maintenance determination made pending final adjudication. The father then petitioned the Supreme Court.
The Court’s Holding
Justice Daphne Barak-Erez dismissed the application without requesting a response, acting under Rule 148A of the Civil Procedure Regulations 2018 (applicable in family proceedings by virtue of Rule 44 of the Family Court Procedure Regulations 2020). She held that the application plainly failed to meet the restrictive standard governing leave to appeal at the “third tier” — that is, where two lower courts have already ruled.
The Court emphasised that this threshold is even harder to clear when the challenged ruling is an interlocutory order fixing temporary child support ahead of a final merits decision, citing earlier Supreme Court decisions to the same effect. The application raised no principled legal question and was firmly rooted in the specific facts of the parties’ dispute. The father’s arguments amounted to no more than a contention that existing law had been misapplied — insufficient to warrant third-tier review. The Court also found no risk of a miscarriage of justice that would justify intervention. Because no response had been requested, no costs were awarded.
Key Takeaways
- Israeli appellate courts apply a stringent standard before granting leave to appeal at the “third tier” (Supreme Court review after two lower-court rulings), and that standard is harder still to satisfy when the underlying order is interlocutory in nature.
- Temporary child-support orders — which are inherently provisional and subject to revision at the final hearing — receive particular deference at the leave-to-appeal stage.
- An argument that a lower court misapplied settled law, without raising a novel legal question or pointing to a risk of a miscarriage of justice, is insufficient to obtain third-tier leave to appeal in family matters.
- Under Rule 148A of the Civil Procedure Regulations 2018, the Supreme Court may dispose of a leave-to-appeal application outright, without requesting the other party’s response, when the petition is plainly without merit.
Why It Matters
The decision reinforces a consistent line of Supreme Court authority limiting further appellate review of interim financial orders in family proceedings. It signals that litigants challenging temporary maintenance amounts face a high bar at every appellate stage, and that procedural arguments about inadequate reasoning in a first-instance ruling will rarely — on their own — justify escalating a dispute to the Supreme Court.
For family-law practitioners, the ruling is a reminder that the appropriate vehicle for correcting a temporary support figure is the final merits hearing, not successive rounds of interlocutory appeals, and that the Supreme Court will readily dismiss third-tier petitions that present only fact-specific grievances without identifying a broader legal issue or a concrete injustice requiring correction.