Bewildered

What is the name of your state?What is the name of your state?
Pennsylvania
Here goes. My father-in-law died recently. My wife became Executor of his estate. He had no will, but left behind a 'second mortgage'. My mother-in-law was recently deemed incompetent by her nursing home's psychologist conveniently to prevent her from signing over the deed just as we're about to sell the house to pay off this 2nd mortgage AND to give the nursing home the balance of her bill for living there. An amazing display of stupidity on their part. They were getting their money that very day if she was allowed to sign.
It's called a 2nd mortgage even tho the first mortgage was paid off a while ago and we are in possession of the deed which is signed by both him and her. The weird thing is that the bills from the mortgage company are in only his name. Hers is never mentioned. When I asked the mortgage company if both him and her signed for this second mortgage, there was a pause, a slight hesitation which led me to believe she might very well not have. The mortgage company said 'yes'. As Executor of his estate, does my wife have the right to demand to see this mortgage agreement with both signatures? And if she did NOT sign for it, but for some reason the bank granted him this loan without her signature, is what they did legal? The reason I ask is that there is great amount of pressure on my wife to become her mother's guardian...which seems a great amount of responsibility just to be able to sign over her mother's house. The prospective buyer and real estate agent, and MY lawyer are anxious to get this done quickly but we are definately sure we'll not become guardian of her. My temptation is to tell the mortgage company we've tried our best to get them their money but are not willing to take on this responsibility of being 'Guardian' to do it. That they should just foreclose on the house and sell it to this eager buyer. Our lawyer told us at the beginning that as executor, we had to at least 'try' to sell this house, which we did...right up until the point of the nursing home screwing things up.
What else can we do?

[BlondeIntel]

If you don't get an answer here, try posting your question in Elder Law or Probate under [url=http://forum.freeadvice.com/forumdisplay.php?f=56]Wills and Trusts[/url].