I am the PR of my brother’s estate of recent appointment because no one else took the time. I live in Michigan. He died in 2024 mom died in 2025. By default his estate became moms as he was unmarried/no children/no will and my sister went and took all his possessions. They were in Florida where my sister lives. Mom was unaware.
My sister has approximately $200k in gold coins in her safe. This asset was listed by my other brother, along with a bank account, a vehicle, and miscellaneous power tools when he tried to be appointed as the PR. The only way that he knew of this information was because my sister gave it to him to file with. Why didn’t she file? Good question. She’s a drug addict and an alcoholic and never does anything wrong and never follows through with anything so I wasn’t completely surprised that she hadn’t tried to remedy this situation. I think the two of them realized somehow that my mom had left them nothing. She had left everything to me and my husband. This was a will that had been in place for over 10 years before she died. She told me she had the gold (prior to our mother dying leaving me as the executor) and she showed other family members. She also shared this information with my other brother and he applied for PR and named all the assets. He was denied due to the estate being in excess of $75k per Florida Statues and he had no counsel. Judge ordered because I was her executor in PR of her state that he felt the logical ruling was to give me PR of my brother’s estate.
I also have a message from her saying he “left her well off by leaving her his fortune”
She has been sent a demand letter and her husband spoke to my husband and told him they received the letter and there is no gold and they have retained counsel to protect them from a lawsuit seeking treble damages if not turned over.
So I have a bit of a dilemma. I’m not entirely happy with the Probate attorney that I hired. I have to constantly reach out to him for updates and it’s very frustrating with the amount of money that he is being paid to handle this. So I’m wondering what to do at this point. Is the message my sister sent me enough? I can’t guarantee that the other family members are going to want to get involved. The brother that originally tried to represent as the PR was working with her to try and go behind my back and I don’t trust him for anything and would rather not get him involved.
Advice?