Hi.

My mother passed away June 12 in state of California. To my knowledge she left no will. She has been divorced from my father for 20+ years. She has four adult children including myself. No grandkids.

She owned a home that still has a substantial mortgage due to a refinance. She owned a car that is not yet paid off. She had social security and a monthly payment from her pension as a state worker. I believe that she basically had used up all of her state pension as she had drawn against it for many years and did not have that many years invested in it.

Unfortunately, two of my siblings were living in the home with her when she passed. One had lived with her for many years, was employed most of the time but never paid rent. The second moved in with mom about a year ago, she has not been employed for about 20 yrs and had no place to go. Both have "issues" with alcohol.

My mom expressed many times that she wanted her estate, such as it is, to go equally to all her children. The problem is the two living in the house want to stay in the home. They seem to think if they continue to pay mom's mortgage payment that they can just stay. Since my other sibling and I have our own homes, those two feel they deserve to keep mom's house for themselves.

Mom did put the one sibling who lived with her for years onto her checking account recently when she became ill. This gives him access to auto-deposited social security and pension funds which he intends to use to continue to pay the mortgage and the living expenses of himself and unemployed sibling. He is also continuing to drive mom's car.

I made funeral arrangements for mom as those had not been arranged or pre-paid and I know the funeral home filed the death certificate with social security. I purchased 10 certified death certificates from the funeral home.

My other independent sibling and myself would like to see mom's home sold to pay her debts (the mortgage, the funeral expenses I paid, her car, etc) and if anything is leftover, it be distributed equally between all the children. To avoid conflict with the others we have done nothing yet.

Should we open probate with a certified death certificate and just let the court settle it? Should we file death certificates with mom's pension plan, her mortgage company, car loan and bank now or let the probate court appoint an administrator and let them do it? We are concerned that our siblings will continue to spend checks coming from the pension, etc and those may need to be repaid. We know probate can take time and in the interim we are trying to minimize the depreciation of the assets (home and car) but we are locked out of the house and have little control over our two non-independent siblings. The one who lived with mom for years is well-meaning but naive and the other is manipulative and nasty. It's a mess and we want to keep things as civil as possible but also make things fair for all.

Optional Information:
State/Country relating to question: California