Sounds like you need to at least consult an estate attorney. Might be worth buying an hour's time to get the answers you need...

The L-i-K-S does have an estate lawyer she used for her own stuff. We've been consulting him and he seems to have handled everything else fine, but I'm not getting any information from anyone about the house questions I have.

There's not a lot of money involved, especially when split four ways, but there's the whole question of paying Mom's taxes for 2007 and whether or not we're creating a mess that's going to be hard to clean up in a few months, stuff like that.

We need to document the bits of money she left, the few saleable assets (the house, a third, so far unclaimed cemetary plot, the Hummels, etc.) and figure out how to handle those. Of course, there's no "estate tax" on an estate as small as hers, but I think each of us probably has to pay our own taxes on what we got, as "income."

Too many questions I don't know the answers to right now. I think I'm fretting because, (a) I know I need to make one more trip to KS to help finish sorting things out and to get the things I agreed to deal with packed and shipped to CO, and, (b) I ran out of meds three days ago and I've been too lazy/distracted to call in a prescription refill so far.

(It's amazing how much having my thyroid hormone fluctuate affects my mental state. Bouncing it up and down by taking the meds and then missing a couple of days is really noticeable.)