Any Ideas..Executor

What is the name of your state?What is the name of your state? WI

My mom's estate has been in Probate going on 2 years, her estate went into probate a week after.Notice to creditors filed within 2 weeks. Small estate. At the time of death very few bills. Her vechicle was sold within 4 months of her passing, which paid off her auto loan. No medical bills. Funeral was paid within 3 months. No credit card debt. She did have a mortgage owed over half. Before her passing she cashed in some old cds, put that in her savings. She also inherited a nice sum of money, but she did not get that until she passed away. The Estate lawyer estimated estate should close very quickly within 9 months at the most.

Which brings us to my Brother the executor. He has had his eyes on mom's house. He has drained the estate to nothing. He was never on time paying the mortgage..which caused late payments fees. The house was near foreclousure a few times(more uncalled for fees). Also more fees for the Estate lawyer. It is my belief that he(executor) was using estate funds to pay his own bills. The courts have no accounting for the estate. There was a hearing to Show cause and executor claimed the estate will be closed soon. I have asked for accounting and as of today, i still have nothing. I have read everything in my state to Executor's responsibllity to the estate and it seems to me he has broken darn near everyone. To make the estate money he has failed, he could of had someone renting on a short term lease. That way the renter would be making the mortgage payments and mom's estate would of been making money. I talked about this with him and he refused, he let the house sit vancant for over 1 year! He has been living in the house with his family for 6 months.

Now my question is. I just found out that another sibling gave him a loan about 10 months ago. The sibling just told me, and said i should of never gave him the loan because i will never see a dime of it. So i am under the impression it was soley a loan to brother. I spoke with brother around this time of the loan and he said i am all caught up on my bills, now i can move into mom's house. Now the estate lawyer is saying this is a estate loan! Thats how i found out. So the executor is trying to stick the estate with this loan. Now the estate if it is for the estate, would not of needed this loan if it weren't for brother mishandling everything.How can he prove that this loan was for the estate? Can i recover lost estate funds, because he screwed up? Could i go back to 9 months at the most and recover from that time? I do know taxes were filed and done in March of 2003 for the year of 2002, the year mom passed away. I will post the next part of this if someone kindly responds. I don't want to throw to much out there at once. Thanks

Was the money from your mother's bank accounts ever added to the estate or did she name a beneficiary on those accounts to bypass probate?

Do you have any idea of what the total value of this estate was or should be?

Does the will say what is supposed to happen with the house or does executor intend to continue living there rent-free when he should be making arrangements to buy out/pay the other heirs for their portion of the home if it is not going to be sold?

Executor and estate attorney are stupid to use the excuse "this was an estate loan" (just to pull the wool over YOUR eyes), since if that is true, executor is going to have to make arrangements to repay the estate and they don't have any proof that a check for that purpose was issued to him from estate monies. It's obviously a lie for them to use in case it comes out that executor has stolen money from the estate that he can't account for.

Right now you don't have enough documentation to prove that there are "lost estate funds". You really need to be consulting with a probate attorney to find out if this executor will face consequences for not filing an accounting of the estate before probate closes--is he going to be able to get away with not filing anything or would your attorney have to file a motion to bring this matter up before the judge to see what he will do about it.

Now let's hear part 2 of the continuing story about what other misdeeds this executor has done with his incompetence in handling this estate!

DANDY DON IN OKLAHOMA ([email protected])

Thanks for the reply Dandy Don.

As far as mom's bank accounts, by the time i got an inventory of the estate, the accounts were near $0. I do know that a couple days before mom died, he took her to the bank and was able to get access to her accounts while she was alive. The reason he stated was 1. incase she was not mental or physicaly able to do it on her own 2.If i believe correctly(i was more worried about mom) so the state would not get the money and it would not have to pass through probate.(that always bothered me, but like i said i was worried about mom. I do know there is an estate checking and savings account.The day mom passed away all her banking/personal papers were gone.

The will states everything gets split evenly(personal..monies..property).


The Value of the estate at the time of death was house $180,000(minus $110,000 still owed to mortgage company) $40,000 in bank accounts, $5,000 in personal properties. As of today still the same owed on house..$0 in accounts..personal properties still in house that executor is living at.

Now about the loan Sibling gave to brother(executor). Sibling even stated to me it was to brother did not say a word about it being a loan to the estate. The estate lawyer says it was a loan to the estate. Well i argued with him on that point and he said i cannot talk to you any further on this. I asked for proof, a copy of the check made out to the "Estate of ____", i got no response. I said the estate would not need a loan, if executor would not of been dragging his feet or would of been renting the house out!What kind of proof would they need to prove it was a loan to the estate?

Part 2
Now i find out at the "Show Cause Hearing", Brother(executor will be buying the house) at FMV. He(executor) hired a differant lawyer to do this,which i think rubbed the estate lawyer the wrong way. The Estate lawyer wants the funds left over after paying the house off, put back into the estate so this mystery loan can be paid back to sibling. I was told that i can get my share whatever is left paid to me directly fron the "new" lawyer handling the sale of the house and it does not have to go back into the estate.I know the estate lawyer gets a % of the estate after everything is said and done, so i think thats why he wants it back into the estate. Now since Brother is the one buying the house and hired a differant lawyer is this his bill? Could the estate pick up the tab for this? I know this loan was for brothers personal use. I have no clue as to if he has been paying the mortgage payments since they moved in or the estate has, i do know for the first 2 months the estate was.

As far as proof of mishandling the estate, wouldn't paying the mortgage late, with the funds right there to pay? He screwed up the first 3 payments right after mom died were late and that included the first foreclousure. So i am thinking he was taking money right away. He never made a payment on time every singal month was late! That i confirmed from the bank and the estate lawyer! He was ignoring calls, ignoring mail..he even went as far to ignore any kind of contact from the estate lawyer for 3 months!

Just a brief note, mom refinanced her house to bail brother(executor) out of trouble otherwise her house would be paid off. So he got away with over a $100,000+ loan without ever repaying, and no there is no written IOU, mom had a heart and trusted.

Brother has succeeded legally in getting his hands on mom's money--the fact that he did so before she died by taking her to the bank was very clever--the excuse that it was done so that the "state" wouldn't get the money was a convenient lie. No wonder the bank records disappeared: he didn't want anyone else to know how much money he had gotten his hands on.

His paying the mortgage late is not legal proof of mishandling the estate.

Quit worrying about them using the excuse of an "estate loan". If they do use it in the accounting, you would need to ask them for any documentation that would prove this, but they are going to look stupid because they won't be able to produce anything because it never happened.

What is the fair market value price that brother is buying the home for?

There is not much you can to proceed against him until you get the official accounting which he will hopefully provide when the estate closes.