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No paperwork was shared with mom. He tried bulling my mother until I stepped around the corner.

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So there is a will, right?
and Auntie likely named your mom as Executor but your brother is trying to assume that role, right?
& your mom is her deceased sister only surviving sibling?
& and your Aunt died without having any children, I’m guessing?
but Aunt died with assets, & assets are still in your Aunts name, right?

if this is what the situation is, then what in my not-an-attorney-but been-an-Executor opinion is that your mom is going to need to get a probate atty to open full probate and the atty files the will to do that OR sends a demand letter to your brother to get him to submit the will. You then let the probate atty do their job as per the terms of Aunties will. If your mom is listed to be the Executor then she’s the executor. But if it was your brother named Executor as per the will, then it’s him.

The terms in the will are pretty much set in stone. If Auntie had assets, someone is going to have to be legally able to file paperwork on the behalf of the estate and deal with the assets and distribute them as per terms of the will. Its hard to get away with shenanigans in probate court if family is monitoring probate filings. Your brother is bluffing & you can call him out on this as probate is open records.

For him to do things, again, he’s going to have to produce a will that states he’s executor as per the will. When he files the will, its a public record. So you can pay a fee to get a download of it. And if he does things contrary to the will, your mom as an heir as per the will, has “standing” to remove him as executor.

If for some reason, your brother gets all huffy and says there was no will, then your atty can file do a “lineal heirship” to establish that your mom is the heir. Doing lineal is not a DIY. Often attys that do lineal have a practice that it’s all they do. It’s not necessarily expensive but it is really precise paperwork & timeframe oriented. Like Notices have to go into publications of record for wherever Auntie & her deceased husband lived and other documents done to establish that they had no children or that their prior marriages had no children, or all children predeceased them. Atty does an statewide asset search. Don’t be surprised if the first probate atty wants to turn it over to another probate atty if it goes lineal route.

I've been an executor x 3, and it seems that rarely sometimes, even tho there is a will, that family does a “we can’t find it” so that they can do a lineal heirship instead. Seems to happen if a will is super old and all the heirs as per the will are themselves dead, and ditto for the Executor & ditto for the old atty and the old law firm doesnt exist anymore either. The Notices for the lineal serves as a call-out to interested parties that if they think they are heirs then they have to contact the atty to let atty know and provide info as to why they have “standing”. Lineal process establishes who are heirs and a dependent administration of the estate is filed in probate by the atty. Then assets get liquidated via the dependent administration (judge supervised) and then get distributed based on the # of heirs.
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AlvaDeer Mar 2021
I had no idea about any of this. Such valuable information. I never even considered that family members could be confiscating a will in order to pretend that one doesn't exist. Yikes.
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Your brother may have been assigned the role of executor?
Is the Aunt now deceased?
The will of an elder must be filed in probate. It must then be distributed. If your Mom is the sole heir then the Aunt's executor will be distributed the funds to your mother.
A will is a public document, so you can access it through public records in your country when it is filed for probate.
You say that your Mom is the only heir of the aunt, her sister's will. May I ask how you are certain of that if the will is being kept from you? Did your mom have a copy of this will, which the elder son confiscated from her?
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The one who is named executor in the will itself is in control of it.
No one else can legally execute that will. Your brother is trying to intimidate your mother. If it's stated in writing that she is the executor of the will.
Her being the closest next-of-kin left to your aunt does not automatically put her in charge of executing her will if she wasn't listed already.
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