@livesimplecolorado I am sorry you had to go through but also have to say...well done!
But, I thought back to my dad who had passed away 5 years prior to my mom, he was the one that put the wills together and appointed me executor. He pulled me aside at the ripe old age of 18 and told me he trusted me and wanted everything split 3 ways, no drama, no fighting. I could not control the fighting part but I could control the fairness part. His words rang through my brain and that was what I did.
My parents did their wills with everything to be split equally between their 3 daughters and fully expected that there would be no issues. Little did they know. Mom died in 2015, Dad in late 2017. My middle sister (I am oldest of the 3), who had taken over their financials prior to their deaths, was appointed executor. Neither I or my youngest sister any reason to not trust her, and for the first six months things proceeded normally with the usual stuff and, after meeting with her attorney, middle sister told me and youngest sister that all there remained was selling the house, everything else was done. This was in spring of 2018. Btw, this was not a complicated estate with the house as the main asset, one car and one bank account.
To make a long story short, middle sister was continually finding reasons to delay selling the house. Fast forward to late 2019, 2 years had now passed since my Dad's death, the house was now empty, fixed up, a real estate agent engaged, but she continued to stall with crazy reasons on why not to list the house. Also she refused to provide an accounting to both of us, any requests from us were ignored. Youngest sister and I decided to hire an attorney to force the sale of the house. Not an easy decision but middle sister was continuing to stall and was not listening to her own attorney. We figured this would get her to move. Instead what happened was that per a provision in our parents trust, sister designated me as special trustee to list and sell the house. House sold 2 months later. During the time I served as special trustee, I found out that my sister wasn't exactly doing things, um, to put it politely, as correctly as she led us to believe.
She had never set up an estate account as she said she was going to do but continued to use my Dad's checking account which had her name on it. Under immense pressure, she finally provided bank statements that showed she took some liberties with the money. It wasn't enough to be worth fighting over, but it raised some serious questions on how she accessed the account prior to my Dad's death, as his checking account dropped 45K during the 2 1/2 years between my mom's death and my dad's. I knew roughly what Dad's expenses were and it didn't add up. She never provided a full accounting of other things either such as my mom's china and silver which we all agreed should be sold. There was jewelry that went missing.
My point is that my parents fully expected for everything to be done fairly, without conflict, and never in a million years would they have thought things would go the way they have. The middle (executor) sister and youngest sister are not speaking. I am on speaking terms with middle sister (per her initiation) but I am wary, too wary to trust her again.
During the time I was special trustee, I kept in touch with both sisters on the progress (in spite of middle sister being mad) and made sure at the closing, they each got their share of the disbursement. This was the way it was supposed to be done as my parents wished but it took hiring an attorney and forcing the issue to get there.
